The Immortal Heights

by Sherry Thomas

  She had no idea the prince picnicked. She thought he worked all the time—and maybe occasionally went for a long walk in the Labyrinthine Mountains.

  “And you know what? After I took down his order, I kept thinking of you. He named everything on the menu that you like—summer salad, pâté sandwich, spinach quiche, and pinemelon ice.”

  “My goodness.” That could easily have been a picnic basket she ordered for herself.

  “You have met him, haven’t you?”

  “Once. At my graduation.”

  The prince had come to give out awards to the Conservatory’s top graduates and hosted a reception for them afterward.

  “Isn’t he a very fine young man?”

  “I for one am glad he is the Master of the Domain.”

  He had been very courteous to everyone present, even though Iolanthe could sense that he did not enjoy such occasions that required him to make small talk.

  “We have not had one so worthy of that title in a while,” Mrs. Hinderstone said decisively.

  On Iolanthe’s way out, Mrs. Hinderstone presented her with a large, beautiful box of chocolates, a thank-you gift. The chocolates attracted several friendly comments as she walked across the great lawn of the Conservatory.

  On the far side of the great lawn, which was otherwise free of any arboreal species, stood a magnificent starflower tree, which the prince had planted in memory of his partner, the great elemental mage. On mild, sunny days, Iolanthe often spread open a blanket under the shade of the tree, to study or to share a scoop of pinemelon ice with her friends.

  She reached home a few minutes before eight o’clock. Soon after she’d arrived in Delamer from the remote Midsouth March, she had been told of an opportunity to look after a professor’s house while the latter did his research abroad. She’d applied for the position, never thinking it would come to her. But it had. And for living in this lovely house, all she had to do was to make sure that it stayed clean and well maintained.

  Almost a bit too much luck for a very ordinary girl from the middle of nowhere.

  She entered the rather modest-looking front door of the house, set Mrs. Hinderstone’s present on an occasion table, and walked to the balcony at the back. The Conservatory of Magical Arts and Sciences sat on the hip of the Serpentine Hills. From the balcony, she had a spectacular view of the capital city, all the way to the dramatic coastline. She stood for almost ten minutes, gazing at the Right Hand of Titus, upon the ring finger of which sat the Citadel, the prince’s official residence in the capital city.

  With a sigh, she headed back inside to fetch the thick stack of laboratory reports sitting on her desk, waiting to be dealt with. As she walked out again, her gaze fell upon the portrait that had been taken at her graduation, of the Master of the Domain handing over her certificate and her medal of excellence.

  She halted in her tracks.

  The portrait had been moved from her nightstand to her desk, then to the top of the bookshelves, and at last to the back of a cabinet with all kinds of knickknacks inside. Still it distracted her. Still it made her stop whatever she was doing to stare. And remember.

  And wish.

  Stupid. It was so stupid it was humiliating. Girls all over the Domain were in love with the prince—at the annual coronation day parade they fainted by the score along Palace Avenue. Understandably enough—he was an attractive young man in a position of tremendous power, and the hero of the Last Great Rebellion, no less. But they were starry-eyed adolescents and Iolanthe was a woman of twenty-three in the last year of her postgraduate work. She taught advanced practicals to first- and second-year Conservatory students. And for heaven’s sake, she was sensible and disciplined enough to grade their laboratory reports bright and early on a Saturday morning!

  And yet it persisted, this somewhat unhealthy fixation on the prince. She didn’t go to coronation day parades; she didn’t buy memorabilia affixed with his likeness; and she never made a fool of herself in front of the Citadel waving a Will you marry me? sign—she didn’t even go anywhere near the Citadel, if she could help it.

  But his least doings mattered to her. She studied his schedule as published by the Citadel, followed media coverage of the ceremonial events he attended, and parsed the language of his statements and speeches for his true assessment of the state of the Domain.

  It was complicated enough, the realm’s transition to democracy from a millennium of autocratic rule followed by years of foreign occupation. On his twenty-first birthday, he had also made the unprecedented move to acknowledge his Sihar heritage.

  The next month, as debate raged among her fellow students, with one of them declaring, “The Master of the Domain is the exception that proves the rule,” she had stood up and asked, even as her palms perspired, “How many exceptions must there be, before you realize that the rule is only in your head? That you would never wish for yourself to be judged the way you judge the Sihar?”

  That night she had sat down and written the prince a long, impassioned letter. To her surprise, within days she had received a two-page reply in his own hand. When they had met at the graduation gala, he had immediately said, “You are the one who sent me the beautiful letter, are you not?”

  They had conversed for all of three minutes. Afterward, she couldn’t recall what they had said to each other. All she carried with her was a sensation of phenomenal intensity, the way he’d looked at her, the way he’d spoken to her, the way he’d taken her hand briefly before she’d had to yield her place in the reception line—as if she mattered more than the entirety of the Domain and it would cost him half his soul to let her go.

  That was the first and last time she had seen him in person. Other people ran into him, but life seemed to have no plans to bring them together again. She could only watch from afar as he went about his grand destiny.

  Truly it was madness, to look upon this distant icon and think that if only they could meet, they would be the closest of friends. He might be an exceptional man, but he was not a friendly one, and she was sure that in private he must be quite difficult in many ways. All the same, day in, day out, year in, year out, he remained the secret undercurrent of her life.

  She realized that she had taken the instant portrait out of the cabinet and was tracing her finger along the edge of his charcoal-gray overrobe. This new generation of instant portraits captured the texture of fabrics, so that she felt the elaborately embroidered band that trimmed the hem, the silk threads smooth and evenly oriented beneath her finger.

  Muttering an obscenity under her breath, she marched into the study and shoved the instant portrait onto the very top of the shelves inside a small closet.

  Ninety minutes later, she had finished with all the reports. She made herself a cup of tea and took out some papers that she had to read for her own classes.

  But she was restless. Instead of reading the papers, she left them on top of her desk and approached the window. It had started to rain, but she could still see the Citadel in the distance.

  She shook her head. She must stop obsessing over him. What could she hope to happen even if she met him again? No more than another couple of minutes of his time. If he had wanted to know her better, he could have done it two years ago—he knew her name and her university; everything else he could have found out, if he had wanted to.

  If he had wanted to.

  That he hadn’t contacted her subsequently was ample evidence that he had no such desires, that all the longing on her part was entirely unrequited: hard truths she must force herself to accept, however unhappily.

  A rattle inside the small closet brought her out of her reverie. She glanced at the door of the closet, confounded and faintly alarmed. Surely there could not be an intruder in this house: she had done the security spells—and she was quite good at those.

  All the same, she pulled her wand from her pocket and silently called for a shield. The closet door opened and out stepped none other than the Master of the Domain himself, a grin on h
is face, looking gloriously young and gloriously happy.

  Iolanthe was thunderstruck. Fortune shield her, had she begun to hallucinate? The prince, though always flawlessly courteous in public, was said to be aloof and solemn by nature, not given to mirth or merriment.

  That she’d conjured a smiling version of him had to be proof that she was out of her mind. Right?

  “Oh,” he said, as he took in her shock and dismay. He cleared his throat and his expression became more serious. “I apologize. I am early again.”

  She was not hallucinating. It really was him, the Master of the Domain, standing not even ten paces away. And what did he mean that he was early again? Early again—when had he been early before?

  “Sire,” she said unsteadily. She should bow. Or curtsy. Or was curtsying too old-fashioned these days?

  “No, do not bow,” he said, as if he’d heard her thoughts. Then, after a moment, “How are your studies?”

  “They are—fine. Going very well.”

  She couldn’t stop gawking at him. His black hair was a little longer than it had been in the official portrait. He wore a simple fawn tunic over a pair of dark-gray trousers and wore it well—the tunic draped beautifully over his lean, spare frame.

  “Did you have fun at the match last night?” he asked, smiling a little again.

  How did he know she had gone to a sporting event? And why was he gazing upon her exactly as she would want him to, with tremendous admiration and something that approached downright covetousness?

  “May I—may I offer you a seat, sire?” She somehow managed to keep her voice even. “And some tea? I also have some chocolate from Mrs. Hinderstone’s shop.”

  “No, thank you. I just had breakfast.”

  She was beginning to feel terrifically awkward. How did one ask the Master of the Domain what in the world he was doing in her house? And how had he come through the storage closet, which was emphatically not a portal of any kind?

  “Me too,” she said, “at Mrs. Hinderstone’s. She mentioned that you had been there in person two days ago.”

  “Yes, the picnic basket for us.”

  For us. Us! Should it feel so completely disorienting when dreams came true? She was asleep, wasn’t she, this whole thing just one fantastical illusion?

  He came toward her, until barely a sliver of air separated them. So close that she could make out the exact design on the decorative buttons on his tunic: a coat of arms unlike any she had ever seen before, with a dragon, a phoenix, a griffin, and a unicorn occupying the quadrants.

  So close that she breathed in his scent of silver moss and cloud pine. So close that when she looked into his eyes, she saw every detail of the starburst pattern of his blue-gray irises.

  “I have missed you,” he murmured.

  And kissed her.

  In the mountains where she grew up, sometimes people rafted down steep, fast-flowing streams. His kiss felt exactly like that, full of danger and exhilaration, making her heart rattle and thump, ready to leap out of her rib cage.

  He pulled back slightly and traced a thumb across her cheek, a caress like lightning. “You and you alone,” he said softly.

  Suddenly her head felt strange, a thousand brilliant dots of light hurtling about. Memories burst into her cranium as if from a geyser. She gripped his shoulder to steady herself.

  He wrapped his arm about her. “Everything coming back now?”

  A secret life unfurled before her. The diligent, mild-mannered candidate for Master of Magical Arts and Sciences was in fact the power beside the throne. Those long walks that he took in the wilderness of the Labyrinthine Mountains? That was time they spent together discussing, strategizing, and sometimes agonizing over difficult decisions. That historic speech he’d given when he’d announced his Sihar heritage and reforms he planned to undertake to make the Sihar full subjects, instead of merely guests of the crown? She had drafted a large portion of it—not to mention persuaded him to take the monumental step in the first place. And one entire summer, as well as a good chunk of an academic term her second year at the Conservatory, instead of being back in the mountains taking care of her elderly grandmother, as she and everyone else had believed, she had been at his side, in disguise as a male aide-de-camp, waging campaigns against remnants of the Bane’s forces.

  Of course, there had been the Last Great Rebellion, in which she had played an instrumental part. Grief shot through her as she remembered those who had been lost—Amara, Wintervale, Mrs. Hancock, Titus’s father, and Master Haywood. She experienced a moment of searing disgust at the thought of Lady Callista and Aramia, who were now in Exile, along with Prince Alectus.8

  And then, pure joy, as she looked upon the young man before her.

  He was the one with whom she’d come through war and hell. The one with whom she’d changed the world. The one with whom her destiny would forever be entwined.

  She smoothed a finger over his brow. “Titus.”

  “That is sire to you, young lady,” he answered, teasing.

  “Ha. Only when you address me as ‘my hope, my prayer, my destiny.’”

  He gave her a dirty look.

  She laughed. “And how dare you take advantage of a poor, hero-worshipping girl?”

  He gave her another dirty look. “I keep telling you to forget all about me in the meanwhile. But will you listen? And then when I misjudge the time, you look at me as if you have been on your knees a thousand years, praying for me.”

  She giggled. “I do get pretty pathetic, pining after you.”

  “No worse than me. You do not know how hard it is to have to wait a week every time before I can see you again. Sometimes I still think that anyone with eyes could have seen through our secret the day of your graduation gala, even though I tried my best to treat you exactly the same as everyone else.”

  Nobody had seen through it, but soon things would change.

  She had always planned to assume a false identity to attend the Conservatory. But she had vacillated over whether to also assume a set of false memories, so that she would enjoy a purer, more unencumbered university experience, without being constantly distracted by what Titus had to deal with as the Master of the Domain.

  In the end she had decided to give it a try, with many, many safeguards in place, and a blood oath she had demanded of Titus, that he absolutely must summon her to his side when the need arose.9

  By and large, she’d had a marvelous time at the Conservatory.10 But now that her time there was near an end, she had become impatient to be who she really was. As soon as she finished her master’s degree, her true identity would be revealed—it still wasn’t a perfectly safe world, but she was no longer deterred by the risks. After that, well, she looked forward to seeing how her life would unfold.

  And today she would take the first step on that new path. “Ready for the Fourth of June? Ready for dear Cooper to fawn all over you?”

  She hadn’t seen Cooper, or anyone from Mrs. Dawlish’s, since she left England on a hot air balloon.

  Titus groaned. “As ready as I will ever be.”

  She kissed him, grinning. “Come. Let’s go make him the happiest man alive.”

  Cooper squealed and lifted Fairfax bodily off the ground. “My God, I can’t believe it. It really is you.”

  She laughed and lifted him in return. “Cooper, old bloke. I heard you’ve avoided becoming a solicitor after all.”

  The most unexpected twist in the entire saga was that Titus and Cooper had become semi-regular correspondents—regular on Cooper’s part and semi on Titus’s. Cooper never would have presumed to write to Titus, but his letters to Fairfax, sent to the fake address in the Wyoming Territory that Titus had set up, had come to Titus instead. And in those early years after the Bane’s death, when Lady Wintervale had nearly been assassinated twice, Titus had deemed it too dangerous for Fairfax, who was supposed to be dead, to reply, even if it was to a nonmage.

  So he had written back instead, putting his talent for l
ying into creating fiction. He found it relaxing to spin yarns of Fairfax, first as a Wyoming Territory rancher, then as a San Francisco hotel manager, and of late, a Buenos Aires businessman. He had also come to enjoy Cooper’s long, rambling missives, full of news of their old friends’ doings. Sutherland had not yet married a loathsome heiress. St. John rowed for Cambridge. Birmingham was now a proper Egyptologist, with eager sponsors for his excavations and avid audiences for his lectures.

  “Thank goodness for that,” said Cooper. “Being the private secretary to a very important man agrees with me. I am well on my way to becoming an insufferable fart.”

  He turned to Titus, blushed a little, and took off his hat, revealing a mop of luxuriant hair.

  Titus shook his head. “Vanity, thy name is Thomas Cooper.”

  One time, remembering his long-ago dream of meeting Cooper on a Fourth of June, Titus had asked in a letter whether he had become heavy. Cooper replied that he had retained his girlish figure, but had unfortunately lost a great deal of hair. Titus, in a charitable moment, had sent him a case of anti-baldness elixir.

  Fairfax slapped Cooper on the back. “My God, that is beautiful, Cooper. Beautiful.”

  Cooper turned the color of a beet. The world’s happiest beet. “I’m so glad to see the two of you. It’s been far too long. And . . .” Some of the delight drained from his face. “And we aren’t always guaranteed to meet with old friends again after many years, are we?”

  In his latest letter, Titus had at last told Cooper that Wintervale and Mrs. Hancock had died long ago, in the same “palace intrigue” that had taken him away from Eton.

  Fairfax wrapped an arm around Cooper’s shoulders. “But today we are. All the old friends in the world.”

  They gathered up Sutherland, Rogers, St. John, and several other old boys from Mrs. Dawlish’s and sat down to a plentiful picnic. Halfway through the picnic, Birmingham, their old house captain, arrived with, of all people, West, in tow. The young men turned aflutter at the sight of West, who had not only captained the Eton eleven, but had gone on to also captain the Oxford University cricket team. He was now embarking on a career as a physicist and shared a house in Oxford with Birmingham.