The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

It was part of his charm, that he was so frank and unguarded.

“In any case,” Wintervale went on, “Kashkari doesn’t—”

A chorus of “Fairfax!” and “We heard you made the twenty-two, Fairfax!” drowned out the rest of Wintervale’s sentence.

Titus gripped the banister and slowly, slowly turned around. But through the space between the balusters, he could only see a huddle of junior boys in their waist-length short jackets.

He took a step down, then another, then two more. All at once there she was, in a senior boy’s uniform of a crisp white shirt and a black tailed jacket, playfully scolding a boy who barely came up to her shoulder. “What kind of question is that, Phillpott? Of course I will be one of the eleven. In fact, West is going to take one look at me and quake in his brogues, because I am going to wrench the captaincy from his grasp.”

The jauntiness in her eyes, the certainty of her tone, and the innate gentleness as she fluffed the boy’s hair—a fierce gladness swept over Titus. “Are you ever going to acquire any humility, Fairfax?”

She lifted her head and gazed at him for a full two seconds. “I will, the moment you come into some social graces, Your Highness.”

Her retort was accompanied by a smile, not the wide grin she flashed for the junior boys, only a slight lift of the corners of her lips. All at once he felt her relief—and behind that relief, a trace of exhaustion.

His chest constricted. But the next moment, she was beaming again, and poking the arm of the senior boy next to her. “Don’t just stand there, Cooper, say something to His Magnificence.”

Cooper bowed with a flourish. “Welcome back, Your Highness. Our humble abode is honored by your august presence.”

Of all the boys in the house, Cooper was probably Fairfax’s favorite, because he was as silly and enthusiastic as a puppy, and because she enjoyed Cooper’s wide-eyed awe at Titus’s princely aloofness.

Titus upheld that princely aloofness. “One could say my august presence is diminished by your humble abode, but I will not think too closely upon the matter.”

Fairfax laughed, the sound deep and rich. “Your humility, prince, shines like a beacon in the darkest night,” she said as she ascended the stairs. “We can only aspire to be so great yet so humble.”

Sutherland, behind Wintervale, cackled so hard he almost choked on the apple he was eating.

She drew up even with Titus. The pleasure of her nearness was almost painful. And when she set her hand on his shoulder, the sensation was all electricity.

“Glad you made it, Fairfax,” he said, as quietly as he could.

Now he could breathe again. Now he was whole again.



When Iolanthe Seabourne came to in utter darkness, naked and in agony, she had not been remotely alarmed: the pain was par for the course for resuming human form after the effect of a transmogrification spell wore off. Her lack of recollection of the hours she had spent as a tiny turtle also did not bother her—without a blood oath binding her to the prince, there was nothing to preserve continuity of consciousness while metamorphosing from one form to another.

Titus’s absence, however, brought a sensation of cold completely unrelated to the temperatures of the night. Where was he? It was unlike him to leave her without a blanket for warmth, or a note to explain his movements.

Had he been taken by Atlantis? Was that why he had to get her away from him, so that she wouldn’t lose her freedom at the same time? The roar of her blood was such that her ears rang as she grimly dug around the hut for something to cover herself.

Her anxiety subsided somewhat after she unearthed changes of clothes, nutrition cubes, and coins in the seemingly abandoned hut. Even better, a student pass issued by a small conservatory somewhere in the northeast of the Domain. She had not been chucked away at a random location in desperation. Something had come up and he needed her out of the castle; without enough time to get her to a proper safe house, he had instead deposited her at a way station.

Dressed and with half a nutrition cube in her stomach, she stepped outside the hut to investigate her new whereabouts. The castle was no more than three miles away to the north. A far-seeing spell revealed the flag of the Domain, a silver phoenix on a background of sapphire, streaming atop the highest parapet.

She frowned. If the Master of the Domain was in residence, his personal standard, that of a phoenix and a wyvern guarding a shield with seven crowns, should be the banner flying over the castle.

Where was he? Her misgivings returned with a vengeance. She must get out of the mountains and find out what was going on.

The castle was situated near the eastern front of the Labyrinthine Mountains. Theoretically, it should be no more than twenty or twenty-five miles, as the crow flies, from the plains. But when the mountains moved without rhythm or pattern, twenty or twenty-five miles as the crow flies might very well take a week on foot.