The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

And now Atlantis had found her.

“Grab everything,” he shouted, lunging toward her.

He took her by the arm and vaulted just as the top of the tunnel pulverized.





CHAPTER 10


England

SOMETHING WAS WRONG, IOLANTHE WAS certain of it, the sense of foreboding a hard weight upon her chest.

But what was wrong?

On the solid, four-poster bed in Kashkari’s room, Wintervale snored softly. Kashkari sat in a chair by the bed, a finger sandwich from the tea tray Iolanthe had asked for in hand, reading a novel titled Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. He had given a book called Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea to Iolanthe, but she had set it down after the first few lines about a “mysterious and puzzling” phenomenon at sea.

She moved about the room, examining the densely patterned pewter-on-blue wallpaper, straightening the knickknacks on the mantel, and tucking the duvet more securely around Wintervale’s feet. His forehead was damp but cool. His eyelids fluttered at her touch, but he slept on.

It always surprised her that Wintervale was not taller than the prince—he seemed to take up so much more room: he never stood in a doorway but with both arms over his head, his hands on the lintel; his speech was always accompanied by a great deal of animated gesticulating; and no matter how much Mrs. Dawlish complained, he continued to slide down banisters and land with huge thumps that reverberated through the entire house.

In a way, he was one of the most rugged, manly-looking boys in the entire school. But at the same time he was also far more childish than the prince, Kashkari, or even someone like Sutherland. Hardly surprising: as long as he remained a child, he wouldn’t have to deal with the heavy expectations of being Baron Wintervale’s only son.

It had always been there in Wintervale, the fear of being all too ordinary, of being nothing and no one compared to his father. But now he no longer needed to worry. Now he had revealed himself to be a wielder of the kind of elemental powers she could only marvel at.

If only his accomplishment hadn’t made Titus, probably the most self-possessed person she knew, act so strange and jittery.

She walked to the window and used a far-seeing spell to scan the gray waters of the North Sea. At the approximate location where Wintervale had created the maelstrom, wreckage bobbed on the choppy waves, but thankfully no bodies—or body parts. And no armored chariots circled overhead, ready to turn their gaze upon the Norfolk coast.

Sea Wolf. That had been the name of the Atlantean skimmer, painted in Greek—ΛΑΒΡΑΞ—white letters against the steel gray of the hull.8 The ship had gone down so fast; the crew probably hadn’t even had time to transmit a distress signal.

A quiet knock came at the door. She turned to see Titus slipping into the room.

“How is he?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” answered Kashkari, setting aside his book. “He said it was something he ate, didn’t he? But his stomach doesn’t seem to bother him, as far as I can tell. On the other hand he is clammy and his pulse is erratic.”

Titus glanced at Iolanthe and her unease surged. Kashkari might not see it but Titus was shaken. No, stricken. She was reminded of the time the Inquisitor suggested that his mother was but using him to fulfill her own megalomaniacal needs.

Titus took Wintervale’s pulse. “You two want some fresh air? We can have a maid come sit with him for a bit.”

“I’m all right,” Kashkari answered. “I can always open the window if I need some air.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Iolanthe.

Titus led the way out. They took a path that skirted the promontory to a ledge underneath an overhang, which could not be seen from the house. The sea swelled below—the storm clouds were encroaching upon the coast, the salt-scented wind cold and insistent. Titus drew a double-impassible circle.

Without waiting for her to prompt him, he recounted what had happened to Wintervale in Grenoble: the trap that had been set by Atlantis, the flight from the square, the dry dock that launched a vessel directly into the North Sea, the Atlantean frigate that appeared almost immediately thereafter.

Throughout the recital, his voice remained completely flat. This was not how one told a triumphant story. Wintervale was a sworn enemy of Atlantis, and a boy whose enthusiasm and amiability belied a deep fear of failure. Today, facing the most perilous moment of his life, pursued by the very enemy that had driven his family into Exile, he had risen to the occasion as few could.

Titus should rejoice, to have such a powerful new ally at hand, and yet he looked like a man condemned.

A nameless fear twisted inside Iolanthe.