you to reach the Commander’s Palace undetected. Besides, Durga Devi might look like you now, but she does not sound like you—and the Bane knows what you sound like. I will speak for both of us and delay that moment of discovery for as long as possible.”
“But—”
“Do not waste time arguing. We have been given an opportunity. Use it.” He exchanged their wands—he did not want the wand that had belonged to both Hesperia and his mother to fall into the Bane’s possession. Then he kissed her on her lips and shook the nearly catatonic Kashkari. “You too, Kashkari. Go.”
Amara kissed her brother-in-law on his cheek. “Don’t think about what you should have done differently. The troth band has been on my arm since summer. It’s all meant to be.”4
Still Kashkari remained frozen in place, shaking. Fairfax had to grab his hand and put it on the Crucible. They disappeared inside. Titus changed the book’s appearance, then hid it as best he could.
“Would you mind if I stunned you?” he said to Amara, his voice quaking with both fear and gratitude. “That way I can pretend that I have botched an execution curse—it would make sense to the Bane that I would rather kill you than let him have you.”
And so that her voice, which remained her own, would not give her away.
Amara nodded. He knew that it was Amara. He knew that the real Fairfax was safe for now, inside the Crucible. But it was Fairfax’s eyes looking at him, eyes wide with fear yet resolute at the same time.
He hugged her tight. “If I do not have the opportunity to say it again later, whatever happens, we are forever in your debt.”
She smiled strangely. “So I have lived long enough to be embraced by the Master of the Domain. May Fortune guard your every step, Your Highness.”
He did not know exactly what she meant, but there was no time to ask. He pointed his wand at her. She crumpled to the ground just as the cliffwalkers broke the cave wide open.
CHAPTER 21
ON THE MEADOW BEFORE Sleeping Beauty’s castle, chaos reigned: creatures of all descriptions in melees, dragons spewing fire, swords and maces running amok as Skytower rose from beyond the hills.
An ogre lumbered toward them, only to have its head disconnect from its body as soon as Kashkari lifted his wand. A cyclops belonging to the Keeper of Toro Tower met a similar fate.
Iolanthe had never seen Kashkari in such a rage.
She left the killing to him and busied herself opening the tent she had brought from the laboratory. She covered the tent with a layer of sod to shield it from sharp implements and the view of marauding creatures. When the shelter was ready, she dragged Kashkari inside, hissing at the sight of his blood-soaked trousers.
Hurriedly she cleaned and bandaged his wound. “You are not allowed to be so careless, Mohandas Kashkari. Do you understand, damn it?”
He threw aside his wand and crumpled, his face wet with tears.
She knelt down next to him. “I’m so sorry. I am so, so sorry.”
“I sent her to her death. I told her everything about that dream, even describing the troth band in detail. That must be how she recognized herself. That was why she married my brother and set out to find us all in the same day, not because of the massacre in the Kalahari Realm, but because of my dream.”
Iolanthe remembered now what Amara had said that morning at the lighthouse, about her staunch belief that events that had been foreseen were not so much inevitable as unstoppable.
The prayer for courage that she had sung—it had been a prayer for herself, that she should be brave enough, when the time came.
And her calm, sincere answer only hours ago atop the stone ledge, when Iolanthe had asked her why she had come to Atlantis. I’ve come to help you.
I’ve come to help you.
And she had. She had saved Iolanthe and, in that process, saved them all. But at what cost to herself? At what cost to those who loved her?
Iolanthe wrapped her arms around Kashkari and wept too, for him, for Amara, for the husband who had been left behind.
Kashkari dropped his head to her shoulder. “I first dreamed of her when I was eleven,” he said, as if to himself. “In my dream it was night, there were torches everywhere, and she was dancing. She had on this emerald-green skirt, and over that, a silver shawl with such