The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

She said nothing.

Down the hall, Kashkari emerged from Wintervale’s room—despite Titus’s reassurance that Wintervale’s condition would not worsen while he slept, Kashkari had elected to remain by Wintervale’s side.

Titus walked over to Kashkari. “How is he?”

“Same. Sleeping soundly, vitals strong—as far as I can tell.” Kashkari hesitated a moment. “Are you absolutely sure you did not give him anything with bee venom as an ingredient?”

“Yes, I am sure,” said Titus, not particularly caring whether Kashkari believed him. “Good night.”

His head throbbed as he walked once more into his laboratory after lights-out. He had a three-hundred-mile one-time vaulting range and had never yet vaulted enough to establish the upper limit for a personal daily range. But with all these trips to the laboratory in the past twenty-four hours, he might be approaching that boundary.

He had brought with him all the remedies that he had taken out of the laboratory: the panacea and the miscellany of remedies that had given Wintervale so much trouble. Titus preferred to be neat—he had very little time to lose to disorganization—but this night he could not handle the otherwise simple task of reshelving the remedies, beyond collecting the vials into a pouch and shoving the pouch into an empty drawer.

The panacea, however, could not be so cavalierly treated. That particular vial he put back into its proper place in the emergency bag he had prepared for Fairfax.

He traced his fingers along the strap of the bag, one of the places where he had left hidden messages for her. He had better erase the messages, which dealt not with their task but with sentiments that were easier to set down in writing than to speak out loud. But he did not want to; it would be almost like erasing her wholesale from his life.

Exhaustion washed over him—not just fatigue, but the loss of hope.

He took a dose of vaulting aid to help with his headache, sat down at the long worktable at the center of the laboratory, and opened his mother’s diary. It was the cruelest master he had ever known, but it remained his only trusted guide in an ever-shifting landscape.



February 25, YD 1021



I hate death visions. I especially hate death visions of those I love.



Titus almost closed the diary. He did not want to be reminded of the details of his death, details that made it real and inescapable.

But he could not help reading on.



Or, for that matter, a death that would distress someone I love. But I suppose there is no way around it. Death comes when it pleases and the survivors must always grieve.



He exhaled. It was not his death. Whose was it then?



Fog, a thick yellowness, like butter that had been dropped in dirt. A few seconds pass before I can distinguish a face in the fog. I recognize it immediately as belonging to Lee, dear Pleione’s son.



Wintervale.



He is still a young boy, but several years older than he is now, staring out from behind a closed window at the dense, shifting fog that seemed to be pushing against the glass, looking for a way in.

He is in a bedroom. His, perhaps. I cannot tell, as it is furnished with a great deal of somberness, in a style foreign to my eyes.

No sounds inside or outside the house. I begin to think this might be a silent vision when he sighs audibly, a sound too wistful, too heavy with loss and yearning for a child so young, a child who should want for nothing.

A shriek shatters the quiet. Lee recoils, but runs to the door of his room and shouts, “Are you all right, Mama?”

He is answered by another blood-curdling shriek.

He runs into a corridor—it is a fine house, I am sure, but feels too shabby and cramped for someone of Baron Wintervale’s fabulous wealth.

Now he is in a larger, more ornate bedroom. Pleione has thrown herself over the body of her husband. She is sobbing uncontrollably.

“Mama? Papa?” Lee stands by the door, as if afraid to move. “Mama? Is Papa . . .”

Pleione trembles—Pleione, who has always been so composed, so in control of herself. “Go downstairs and tell Mrs. Nightwood to take you to Rosemary Alhambra’s house. And when you get there, ask Miss Alhambra to come and to bring the best physician she can find among the Exiles.”

Lee remains where he is.

“Go!” Pleione shouts.

He runs, his footsteps echoing through the corridor.

Pleione returns to her inert husband. Tenderly she cups his face and kisses him on his lips. Her hand trails up and lifts the hair at his temple. I gasped as I saw the faint red dot at his temple, the telltale sign of the execution curse.



So it was true, then. The cause of Baron Wintervale’s death had been given as a catastrophic failure of the heart, but rumor had circulated for years that he had died of an execution curse ordered by Atlantis.