He had done it. He had killed the Inquisitor after all. He straightened, relief and nausea rising within him, entwined. He didn’t know whether to cry or to vomit.
A hissing, crackling rumble behind him, however, made him forget both. He wrenched the wyvern higher and barely avoided a trail of fire as broad as a highway.
The phantom behemoth was still half a mile behind him. No real dragon spewed its fire so far, so fast. But that was the advantage of mythological creatures: they were a law unto themselves.
Fire fell like a meteor storm. The grassland below burned. Rising smoke racked him with coughs and made his eyes water. It was only by his sense of hearing that he dodged the next tornado; and only by the hair standing on the back of his neck that he somehow evaded a quieter tongue of flame that had stolen upon him.
In front and to either side, walls of tornadoes towered, howling with violence. Behind him bellowed a mountain of fire, so much of it, as if a portion of the sun had been torn loose.
Was this it—fire, smoke, and dragons? Would he fall to his end, as his mother had foreseen?
He had done what he needed to do. He had lived long enough.
Be safe, Fairfax. Live forever.
The fire the phantom behemoth breathed! The mass was staggering. The beauty. The splendor. As a lover of fire, Iolanthe had never see finer. That was, until she realized the fire was directed at Titus, her Titus. His wyvern weaved between the raging torrents, clinging to safety by a hairbreadth.
Helgira sank to her knees. “The will of the Angels is a joy to behold,” she murmured.
You mud-eating primitive! That is no Angel; that is Atlantis.
Iolanthe said nothing; she only lifted her wand to render Helgira unconscious.
I will not let you die. Not while I have a breath left.
Huge tornadoes reared like a cliff, obscuring her view of him. The phantom behemoth emitted a roar that made windowpanes rattle, then spewed forth fire enough to melt Purple Mountain.
She strode onto the terrace outside Helgira’s bedchamber and raised her hands. All the power that had been building inside her raced toward her fingertips.
The fire would irreparably damage the wyvern’s wings, leading to certain death. The tornadoes? Almost certain death, but people had been known to survive tornadoes.
Titus urged the wyvern forward. Perhaps they’d find a gap.
Or perhaps not: the tornadoes formed an unbroken barrier.
And then the barrier was no longer so unbroken. One tornado weakened, then dissipated altogether, leaving a cloud of falling debris.
He wheeled the wyvern toward the gap.
No, they were not going to make it before the gap closed.
A tailwind—so freakishly strong it almost sheared him off the wyvern’s back—threw them through the gap.
Another elemental mage was at work.
Helgira.
He reapplied the far-seeing spell. There she was, in her long white dress, standing on the terrace atop her fort, her black hair whipping in the wind. In the light from the fort’s torches, she resembled Fairfax exactly.
He urged the wyvern toward her.
The air whistled. Boulders the size of houses flew at him. They must already be in the foothills of the Purple Mountain, not too far to go.
But the boulders were relentless, a storm coming from all sides. He steered the wyvern blindly, relying more on intuition than sight.
I’m so close. Help me!
Something struck the wyvern on the head, a smaller rock, but enough to send it plunging, and he with it.
I won’t let you fall.
She did not. She held the wyvern aloft and propelled it with a tailwind the Angels would be pleased to have breathed.
As for the phantom behemoth and the would-be murderer who sat upon it—enough was enough.
She raised her hand toward the overcast sky. The clouds crackled with electric charge. Blue flashes leaped from cloud to cloud. From the farthest horizon, lines of energy rushed toward Purple Mountain, meeting at the zenith of the sky, seething, roiling.
Waiting for her.
She pointed her finger at the phantom behemoth.
Down the lightning came, beyond beautiful, beyond powerful.
All the boulders in the air fell. The phantom behemoth fell, striking ground with a force that jolted her entire person.
After another minute, the hardy little wyvern regained consciousness and, finding itself still airborne, began to flap its wings again.
Titus landed on Helgira’s terrace, kissed the wyvern on its scaly neck, and dismounted. Helgira, panting, regarded him with both tenderness and fury. All at once he knew she was not Helgira, but Fairfax. She had come, his most stalwart friend, and she had saved him.
He closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around her. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I thought this was the night the prophecy came true.”
“No, not tonight.” One of her hands was in his hair, the other tracing his jaw. “Not ever, if I can help it. But not tonight, at least.”
He could not begin to describe the sensation of being alive, being safe, and being here, with her.
His lips hovered barely an inch above hers. Their breaths mingled.
“Love will make you weak and indecisive, remember?” she murmured.
What a fool he had been. For a journey like theirs, love was the only thing that would make him strong enough.
“Don’t ever listen to an idiot like me,” he answered.
“Well,” she said, “I guess it doesn’t count if it happens in the Crucible.”
With that, she pulled him to her and kissed him. Tears stung the back of his eyes. He had survived. They had survived. He held tightly on to her, on to life itself.
Titus would have liked to remain forever—or at least another minute—in this state of euphoric closeness. But with a sigh, Fairfax let go of him. “I’ve got boys running all over Eton to cover our tracks. I need to get them back to bed.”
Titus made sure he left behind Helgira’s cuff. And just to be careful, after they returned to the Black Bastion in his copy of the Crucible, he sealed the portaclass="underline" he still preferred to err on the side of caution, even in the midst of risking his life.
In this fort, where he had caused such a ruckus, there was consternation at his reappearance, followed by flabbergasted looks as Fairfax climbed onto a wyvern behind him. But that was the advantage of being mistaken for the lightning-wielding mistress of Black Bastion: she didn’t need to explain herself to anyone.
Even better, as the wyvern took to the air, she wrapped her arms about him and laid her head on his shoulder.
Was this what happiness felt like?
She recounted how she had managed to pass before the Inquisitor unscathed, and that Kashkari had been “the scorpion.” He told her what he had seen and heard in the Citadel, including Horatio Haywood’s mysterious disappearance.
“Thank you,” she said, banding her arms tighter around him.
“What for?”
“For being willing to rescue my guardian.”
“Now we no longer know where he is.”
“We’ll find out,” she said, her voice scratchy with fatigue. She ruffled his hair. “And you—you are all right with having killed the Inquisitor?”
“I would rather someone else had taken her life. But I will not miss her.”
They dismounted on the meadow before Sleeping Beauty’s castle. She shed the wig and the gown she had borrowed and turned once again into a lithe, cocky boy.
He drew her to him and rested his cheek against her hair. “Is it true that if it happens in the Crucible, it doesn’t count?”