The transformation was horrendous, as if a hundred rodents were trying to gnaw their way out from underneath Iolanthe’s skin.
Afterward, she lay in place, unable to move—and not merely because of her physical feebleness.
The things that boy wanted frightened her.
She should laugh at such ambitions on his part: nothing about him held any romance for her, not his crown, not his black heart, not his beautiful liar’s face.
Yet she trembled inside, for what he wanted was not impossible.
It was not even improbable.
“I am not dead—or about to die,” said Titus in response to Fairfax’s gasp from the door.
She was at his side, her breaths ragged. “Then why are you on the floor?”
He had lost consciousness again after retaking most of the remedies. And it had seemed easier, after he had come to, to simply remain on the ground. “You had the nearest bed. How was the transformation, by the way?”
She did not answer, but only pulled him to his feet and half carried, half dragged him to the cot next door. “Are you sure you are not dying this instant?”
“I am very certain. I will die by falling, not lying comfortably in a bed.”
“What?”
Damn the truth serum still raging through his veins. He should have censored himself—she was no longer a bird. “Make me some tea, would you? Everything you need you will find in the the repository, in the cabinet underneath the globe.”
She gave him a narrow-eyed glance but left, returning a few minutes later with two steaming mugs and a tin of everwell biscuits.
He tried to sit up.
She placed her palm firmly against his chest. “Stay down.”
“How do I drink tea on my back?”
“Have you forgotten who I am?” A globule of tea the color and translucency of smoky quartz floated toward him. “This is how you will drink tea lying down.”
Her expression was somewhere between anger and grief, but closer to which he could not tell. “I can sit up for a cup of tea,” he said.
“Don’t. I was there. I knew what the Inquisitor did to you. I saw you bleed from the ears.”
He sucked in a breath. “You remembered?”
“Yes.”
Before he attempted his first transmogrification, he had read all the extant literature on the subject. Transmogrification was fairly old magic, so even though it had always been frowned upon and at times outlawed, there was no lack of records and studies.
In fifteen hundred years, there had been only two accounts of mages claiming memory from time spent in animal form. Most scholars considered those mages to have been either exaggerating or lying outright.
But Fairfax was clearly not lying—there was no other way she could have known what happened to him in the Inquisition Chamber except to rely on her own memory.
“How?”
“I’m not sure. I wonder if it has anything to do with the blood oath—that I had to maintain a continuity of consciousness so that I am never in danger of betraying my word.”
He almost did not hear a thing she said as he recalled what he had said. If you loved me, everything would be so much easier.
She was still speaking, berating him for his stupidity in refusing to let the court physician treat him even though he had bled from his ears.
“I was not bleeding from the ears.”
“Don’t lie. I saw you.”
“I cannot lie to you while under the blood oath, remember? The blood came from the veins on my wrists—I had extractors hidden inside my cuff braces. The court physician would have realized. That was why I could not see him. I cannot allow word to get back to the Inquisitor that I am not as badly hurt as I appeared to be.”
The way she gaped at him, he could not tell whether she wanted to punch him or to hug him. Probably the former. He missed those brief hours when she would have hugged him. He never liked himself as much as when she had liked—even admired—him.
“How did you know you’d need extractors?” she asked, still suspicious.
“Before their minds broke, Inquisition subjects often bled from various orifices. I had hoped that when I bled, the Inquisitor would think she had gone far enough.”
She clamped her teeth over her upper lip. “Did she stop?”
“No.” He shook his head—and grimaced at the sharp pain brought on by the motion. “What happened in there? Did Captain Lowridge take it upon himself to break down the doors?”
Interruptions during Inquisition were never allowed. If Captain Lowridge had indeed cut in, for the man’s own safety Titus would need to dismiss him immediately, so he could hide from the Inquisitor’s wrath.
“No,” said Fairfax. “Her minions rushed in first when they heard her scream. Captain Lowridge followed very closely on their heels, though.”
He frowned. “What made her scream then?”
Iolanthe recounted her tactic, barely paying attention to her own story, still reeling from the revelation that the prince had planned the bleeding-from-the-ears part.
She ought to be more concerned that he was trying to make her fall in love with him, but all she could think about was the boy whose cat was killed on his lap, and who grew up terrified of the day he would be subject to the power of that same mind mage.
She recalled the precision of his spells, the result of endless, feverish practice. What of this nonspell, this pretense of bleeding? How many times had he rehearsed with extractors in his sleeves, falling down on the cold granite floors of the monastery, hoping that should an Inquisition come to pass, he would have a prayer of saving his mind?
“I moved the chandelier. The light elixir spheres fell out. My eyes were closed, but I believe one of the spheres struck the Inquisitor’s person directly—I heard a thud before the crashes came. And then it was all to Captain Lowridge’s credit for getting you out of the Inquistory.”
She didn’t expect him to be grateful, but she did expect him to be pleased. After all, he’d been deeply concerned about her inability to command air. Now she’d not only saved him, but proved herself that rarest of creatures, an elemental mage who controlled all four elements.
But his expression, after an initial shock, turned grim. He pushed the sheet aside and struggled to get up. “Why did you not tell me sooner?”
She gripped his arm to steady him. “I thought you were drawing your last breath.”
He swayed, but his scowl was fierce. “Understand this: you will never again care whether I live or die, not when your own safety is in danger. My purpose is to guide and protect you for as long as I can, but in the end, only one of us matters, and it is not me.”
He was so close, his heat seemed to soak into her. There was a small patch of dried blood he had not yet managed to wash off, an irregular-shaped smear at the base of his neck. And where he’d loosened his sleeves, she could see a puncture mark on the inside of each wrist, where the extractors had pierced his skin.
A bright pain burned in her heart. She might yet save herself from falling in love with him, but she would never again be able to truly despise him.
“We must get you out of the Domain this instant,” he said, “before the Inquisitor realizes that someone else was in the Inquisition chamber—someone with elemental powers.”
He was already walking—tottering. She braced an arm around his middle.
“I need to go back to my apartment at the castle. The transmogrification potion is in my satchel. Get me to the bathtub upstairs. Then come down here and remove all evidence that might lead anyone to suspect your presence. The Inquisitor dared to come after my sanity; she could just as well invade my sanctuary.”
She nodded tightly and walked faster, pulling him along.
At the bathtub, he bent down to turn on the faucets. “Go. And come back fast.”