The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

“You were to have your interview with the Inquisitor as soon as she arrived,” Lady Callista went on. “She would see the drink in your hand and know that you’d been dosed. But the serum would have no effect on you for almost an hour, by which time you would be done with her and no worse off than when you’d begun. Then I could ask you questions just as the truth serum began acting, and find out my daughter’s whereabouts.

“But you didn’t have your chat with her at the Citadel. Instead, over everyone’s objections you went to the Inquisitory. And didn’t begin your Inquisition until after the truth serum had taken effect.”

Something still didn’t make sense for Iolanthe. “You were there at our school on the Fourth of June. The Inquisitor could have hauled me away. You just sat there. You did nothing.”

“What could I have done? I was there, as you said. I had to suppress all my memories to not give myself away. And I risked everything to get him out of the Citadel that night, didn’t I?”

Lady Callista pointed to Master Haywood, who looked completely stunned by the goings-on.

“Only because you yourself were in danger of being unmasked,” Iolanthe shot back, growing angrier with each word. “You were afraid that if the Inquisitor could really see past the memory spells, your own position would be in jeopardy. If you cared about him at all you would not have escrowed his memory in such a way as to never allow him access.”

Lady Callista’s features hardened. “Difficult decisions must be made sometimes. You are too young and you don’t know men. When they want you they will say and do just about anything, but you can’t expect constancy on their part. How could I trust that if I let him remember, he would still continue to keep my secret, or to keep you safe?”

Iolanthe’s fingers clenched into a fist. “Is that how you treat people who love you, who give up everything for the love of you?”

“Yes. Because he”—Lady Callista again jabbed a finger in Master Haywood’s direction—“does not love me. He loves a figment of his own imagination. The real me uses people, discards them, and has absolutely no regrets. Does he love that?”

Iolanthe was speechless.

“And you, you little ingrate.” Lady Callista was only becoming more vehement. “Do you have any idea how difficult it was, how frightful, to figure out how to do everything my future self was telling Haywood we needed to do?”

A clanking sound. The prince opened his hand and his wand, which had fallen to the floor, returned to his palm. Iolanthe stared at him: he was no more likely to drop his wand than he was to lose his mother’s diary.

“And for what?” Lady Callista went on. “Never have I had a single thank you from you. All you ever do is whine about how I am not helping your precious Master Haywood.”

There was no arguing with self-justification of such magnitude and Iolanthe did not bother to try. “Break the fear circle. You let him go, we will let you go. It’s a fair enough trade.”

“Absolutely not. I will not have you running about and causing me more trouble. You will come with me. You will lie low. And you will not be heard from again until either the world ends or I go to the Angels.”

The prince tapped Master Haywood on the arm and whispered in his ear. Master Haywood looked irresolute. But Titus spoke again. And Master Haywood nodded at last.

He came before Lady Callista and began to chant a long series of spells.

“How dare you?” shouted Lady Callista.

She fired various spells to stun and silence him, but the containment dome rendered them ineffectual.

“How dare you!” she shouted again.

But Master Haywood went on doggedly with his spells. And when he fell silent, Lady Callista dropped to the floor, unconscious.

Titus put her under another time freeze before he undid the containment dome. Lifting her from underneath her arms, he began dragging her toward the front door.

“What did you do to her?” Iolanthe asked Master Haywood.

“The prince asked me to put away all her memories having to do with you. When she comes to, she will know how to return to the Citadel. But she will not think to come back and pursue you.”

“Not that she would, in any case,” said Titus. “All her memories having to do with the two of you have probably been suppressed for a while, since Atlantis has been interrogating her day in and day out.”

Iolanthe shook her head a little. “Then how did she know to come here?”

“You can make special provisions. For me, my memory of reading the vision of my death will return in full force when I step onto Atlantis itself.” He propped Lady Callista up against the door and placed her hand on the handle.

“What are you doing now?” Iolanthe asked.

“I need her hand on the door to break the fear circle. Thank goodness she did not set a blood circle—that would not be so easy to break. But then again, the authorship of a blood circle can be verified, so she probably would not take that kind of a chance unless she felt she had no other choice.”

He murmured the necessary incantations. Iolanthe watched him carefully, wondering what exactly Lady Callista had said earlier to cause him to drop his wand. He looked a little grim, but other than that, he seemed normal enough.