His face burned. “Yes.”
Her gaze was steady. “Why?”
“To preserve the House of Elberon—he refused to go down as the last prince of the dynasty.”
When given the choice by Atlantis between abolishing the crown altogether or offering his daughter, an active participant in the January Uprising, as a sacrifice, Prince Gaius had chosen the latter. It was not the most shameful secret of the House of Elberon’s long history, but it came close enough.
“Did your mother really foresee her own death when she was a child?”
“I do not know.”
“Did she tell you anything before she died?”
“Only that if I ever wanted to see my father, I had to bring down the Bane.”
He would never have brought his father into the discussion, but the blood oath obliged him to tell the truth.
She chewed contemplatively. “If you don’t mind my asking, who is your father?”
His cheeks scalded hotter, if possible. “I do not know that either.”
“Your mother never mentioned him?”
“She mentioned him a great deal.” His love of books, his beautiful singing voice, his smiles that could raise the sun at midnight. “But nothing that can be used to identify him.”
How excited he had been at the possibility his mother’s question implied. Do you want to see your father? He had thought it a question like Do you want a slice of cake?—with the cake to be produced within the minute.
Fairfax swirled a spoon in her soup bowl. “What did you say when you heard that you had to bring down the Bane?”
He had not been able to say much for the fear and disappointment that jostled within him. And the anger—that his own mother would trick him so.
“I said I was not going to fight the Bane because I did not want to die.”
His mother had broken down and sobbed, tears streaming down her face to splatter upon her lovely sky-blue shawl. He had never seen her cry before.
“But you agreed eventually,” said Fairfax quietly, her eyes almost tender.
He could still see his mother’s tearstained face. Still hear her muffled voice as she answered his bewildered question.
Why are you crying, Mama?
Because I hate myself for what I ask of you, sweetheart. Because I will never forgive myself, in this life or the next.
Something in him had broken apart at those words.
“I was six,” he said. “I would have done anything for her.”
There existed something in this world that bound a mage tighter than a blood oath: love. Love was the ultimate chain, the ultimate whip, and the ultimate slave driver.
He reached into the satchel, which he had placed on the floor next to the chaise, and pulled out a thick book.
“I’ve seen that book. You brought it all the way from school?” asked Fairfax.
“In priorem muta,” he said. The book undisguised itself and became a plain, leather-bound journal. “My mother’s diary. She recorded all her visions in here.”
“It’s empty,” Fairfax said, after he had turned some thirty, forty pages.
“It will only show what I must see.”
The diary had been left to him when his mother died, with the inscription My dearest son, I will be here when you truly need me. Mama.
He had opened it daily and come across absolutely nothing. Only after he had learned the truth of her death—that it had been murder, not suicide—had the first entry appeared. The one about him, on the balcony, witnessing the phenomenon that would and did change everything.
He kept turning the pages, but they remained stubbornly blank. Something cold and terrible gnawed at his guts.
I need you now. Do not abandon me. Do not.
A few pages from the very end of the diary, writing at last appeared in her familiar, slanted hand. His hand tightened on the binding so his fingers would not shake from relief.
“You might as well read along with me,” he said to Fairfax. “Many of her visions have to do with our task.”
Fairfax left the low table and crouched down next to him.
4 April, YD 1021
While Titus and I played in the upper gardens this morning, I had a vision of a coronation—one could not mistake those particular banners of the Angelic Host, flown only at coronations and state funerals. And judging by the colorful attire of the spectators thronging the street, I was witnessing no funeral.
But whose coronation is this? I caught three minutes of a long parade, that was all.
I came back to Titus tugging at my sleeve. He had found a ladybug he wanted me to admire. The poor child. I do not know why he loves me. Whenever he wants my attention, I always seem to be caught in another vision.
“The date—it’s just after the end of the January Uprising, isn’t it?” asked Fairfax.
Titus nodded. Baroness Sorren had been executed the day before.
They read on.
10 April, YD 1021