heavy beading that it sounded like raindrops falling every time she spun around. She wove through the crowd, smiling and laughing, hugging all the women and kissing all the babies—I’d never seen anyone look so happy.
“That would turn out to be the evening of her engagement party. The dancing lasted well into the night—and my brother never once took his eyes off her.” His voice caught. “Now he’ll never see her again.”
As a child, a mutable could mimic the appearance of another, and then resume her own without any trouble. But as an adult, if a mutable changed her appearance, it stayed altered. In life and in death, Amara would henceforth always look exactly like Iolanthe.
None of them would see her extraordinarily beautiful face again. Ever.
Iolanthe closed her eyes and imagined herself at Amara and Vasudev’s engagement party: the firelight, the music, the stomping feet of the dancers, the hint of perfume and spice in the air. And Amara, full of love and a zest for life, blissfully ignorant of the deadly prophecy that awaited her.
Despair swamped her—destiny was the cruelest master. Every chosen one was damned. Even those who were simply swept along by the tide were towed under more often than not.
When she opened her eyes again, the bland interior of the tent greeted her, lit by the mage light she had summoned, everything cool, blue, and utilitarian. There was no joy, no music, and no celebration in her ears, only the din of the pandemonium outside.
She raised her wand, wanting to do something and not knowing what. Only then did she notice that she wasn’t holding a plain spare wand. Vaguely she recalled Titus taking that from her and giving her his wand instead.
She had never seen this wand, made from a unicorn’s horn. On it was etched the symbols of the four elements, along with the words Dum spiro, spero.
While I breathe, I hope.
She had come upon those words the day she first called down a bolt of lightning. And now here they were again, near the very end.
Was it divine inspiration or cosmic joke?
It didn’t matter now. With or without hope, they still had work to do.
“Come on,” she said, giving Kashkari’s shoulder a shake. “You don’t believe in the inevitability of visions. Let’s go. If we can reach the Commander’s Palace soon enough, maybe it’ll end differently.”
Her words were fervent, yet empty for all their urgency. Perhaps at the moment of his prophetic dream, the future had not yet hardened. But now . . .
Kashkari allowed her to wipe away his tears. “You are right. Let’s do what we can.”
He sounded as hollow as she had, but his eyes burned, despair with an edge of desperate hope.
She took his hands in hers and said—wishing with all her heart the exit password was anything but—“And they lived happily ever after.”
Dozens of hunting ropes rushed into the cave and bound Titus and Amara tight. Mages holding actual battle shields crowded the cave and stripped Titus of the plain wand that had been in Fairfax’s hand a minute ago. Next, they not only blindfolded him, but gagged him as well—presumably the Bane did not want him telling anyone else about the Lord High Commander’s penchant for sacrificial magic. He was then put under a temporary containment dome, to be sure he would make no trouble for the Atlantean soldiers.
He was afraid they might plug his ears too, but they did not seem to care that he could still hear perfectly well.
“She is unconscious, but her life signs are strong,” reported someone. “We are readying the astral projector, sir.”
An astral projector would cast her image—and speech also, had she been capable of it—to a remote location. It was a piece of Atlantean wizardry that no one else had managed to duplicate.
The audience at the other location was apparently satisfied, for the next commands that boomed were for the astral projector to be dismantled and packed away, and for the “elemental mage” to be transported with great care.
The gag in his mouth was yanked out. “Where’s the book?”
“In her bag, under a disguisement spell.”
Amara carried a book of prayers with her. Titus could only hope that the Atlanteans would buy his answers.
“Turn it back.”
“The spell is hers. I do not know the countersign to it.”
“Where are the others who came with you?”
“They died in Lucidias.”
The gag was shoved back into his mouth. Something like a metallic barrel closed around his torso.
“All right. Let’s go quickly,” ordered the same soldier