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.”
She ran and did as he asked. Sprinting back upstairs, she reached the bathtub as he materialized again, this time soaking wet, holding not a flask, but what looked to be a bottle of hair tonic.
“Where’s the potion?”
He climbed out of the tub and pointed his wand at the hair tonic. “In priorem muta.”
The bottle turned into a compartmented flask. She grabbed it. Drinking the potion in big gulps, she pointed her free hand at him and dissipated all the water from his sodden undertunic—the night was cool and he’d begun to shiver. Then she whisked away all the water he’d dripped onto the floor while downing the second solution.
“Clear thinking under pressure, as always,” he murmured.
Assuming bird form was not only unpleasant, but disorienting, everything around her rapidly inflating to mountainous sizes.
He took her in hand. “Time to go.”
“You wish to be on a train headed not into Slough, but into London, sire?” asked Dalbert, sounding doubtful.
“Precisely.” Titus checked his person, his clothes, and his belongings, applying one spell after another to reveal the presence of tracers and other foreign objects. He was clean.
“But, sire, in your condition—”
“All the more reason to leave without delay. You saw what the Inquisitor did to me. The House of Elberon means nothing to her. The farther I am from her, the safer I will be.”
Dalbert still did not look convinced, but he acquiesced and lifted Titus’s satchel.
A loud knock rattled the door of Titus’s bedchamber. “Your Highness, Lady Callista to see you,” announced Giltbrace from outside