The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

He must have been dead for hours, given how muted the red dot had become. By the time Lee returns with Rosemary Alhambra and a competent physician, the dot—and its twin on the other temple—would have disappeared altogether.

Pleione’s gaze turns hard. She grips his lifeless hand. “Perhaps the Angels will have mercy. But I will not. I will not forget and I will not forgive.”

And then she collapses again upon him and weeps.

My vision ended there. I came out to see Titus playing by himself, tracing a small twig on the surface of the fishpond.

I rushed over and hugged him tight. This surprised him, but he let me go on hugging him for a long time.

I had wondered why, in my vision of Baroness Sorren’s funeral, it had been so sparsely attended. Granted she is more admired than beloved, but she commands such extraordinary respect that I had always found the emptiness of her funeral both upsetting and ominous.

Now I understood.

This uprising of ours is going to fail. Few will dare to come and pay their last respects to Baroness Sorren because she will have been executed by Atlantis. And Baron Wintervale, while he might escape in the meanwhile, before long he too will succumb to Atlantis’s vengeance.

And me, what about me? Should our effort collapse, would the secret of my involvement be revealed? If so, what would be the consequences?

“Want to come feed the fishies with me, Mama?” Titus asked.

I kissed the top of his head, my sweet, wonderful child. “Yes, darling. Let us do something together.”

While we still could.



Titus remembered that afternoon. They had not only fed the fish, but played several games of siege and gone for a long walk in the mountains. He had felt quite giddy—it was not often that he was the recipient of his mother’s undivided attention. But beneath his pleasure, there had been a sense of unease. That somehow it could all be taken away from him.

It had been, only weeks later.

And now again, everything that mattered to him had been wrenched away.

Nothing and no one will take you away from me, Fairfax had said.

Nothing and no one, except the heavy hand of destiny itself.



It seemed to Iolanthe that she did not sleep a wink, yet in the morning she suddenly jerked awake. It was pitch-dark outside. She called for a bit of fire so she could see the time. Ten minutes to five.

The irony. This was the time she had woken up daily in the last Half. Bleary-eyed, she would throw on some clothes and go to Titus’s room, where he would already have a cup of tea waiting for her. A few sips and it was into the Crucible, to train her to the limits of her endurance.

As they waited for the completion of the new entrance to the laboratory—he no longer dared to keep the Crucible at school—training had not yet started for this Half. But she had known it would be even more arduous. Because they had won a battle and not the war. Because the road was long yet.

And now their paths had diverged and hers had run smack into a wall.

She swung her legs over the side of her cot and dropped her face into her hands. How to stop being the Chosen One? How to return to an ordinary life when she had come wholeheartedly to believe that she was the very fulcrum upon which the levers of destiny pivoted?

She washed, dressed, made herself a cup of tea, and sat down at her table to memorize the Latin verses that had been assigned in class, all the while feeling like an actor onstage, performing a choreographed sequence of actions.

I live for you, and you alone.

I am so glad it is you. I cannot possibly face this task with anyone else.

How easily did such fervent declarations lose all their meaning, like the green leaves of summer turning brittle and lifeless with the onset of winter. He had loved her because she was the most integral part of his mission. Now that she was no longer, out she went like yesterday’s newspaper.

She could not breathe for the agony in her chest.

And the terrible thing was, her heart—and her mind—understood that she had been discarded, but her body didn’t. Her sinews and bones longed to be inside the Crucible, battling dragons, monsters, and dark mages. She couldn’t stop her fingers from tapping restlessly against the edge of her table. And every other minute she sprang up from her chair to pace in the room that had become a prison.

It seemed dawn would never come and none of the boys would ever stir from sleep. She leaped in pure relief as she heard footsteps and a knock somewhere down the hall. But hesitation came over her as she gripped the door handle. What if it was Titus?

She yanked open the door all the same.

It was Mrs. Dawlish and her second in command, Mrs. Hancock, who also happened to be a special envoy of Atlantis’s Department of Overseas Administration.

Kashkari’s door opened at the same moment.