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will you come with us or will you prefer to seek your own path?”
    Fairfax glanced at Titus. “We will seek our own path.”
    As they had always done.
    â€œBesides, you will be safer without us around, Durga Devi,” added Fairfax.
    â€œI will go with them,” said Kashkari.
    â€œHave you dreamed of it?” asked Amara solemnly.
    Kashkari had once told Fairfax that his people did not consider visions as the future written in stone. Amara, on the other hand, seemed to take his prophetic dreams with extreme seriousness.
    â€œNo,” answered Kashkari. “But I don’t need dreams to tell mewhich way my destiny lies. Tell Vasudev I’m sorry we missed each other.”
    â€œI will. And I’ll look after him for you—and trust that we’ll meet again someday.”
    â€œLook after yourself too.”
    Kashkari’s voice was oddly cracked. With some shock Titus realized that Kashkari was barely holding himself together—there was every chance he would not see either his brother or the woman he loved again. Ever.
    Amara took his face in her hands and kissed him tenderly on his forehead. “Be safe and come back to us, my brother.”

CHAPTER 4
    SILENT AND SWIFT THEY FLEW, headed toward an eastern horizon that was beginning to be limned by a band of soft golden light, fading up to a still inky, star-studded sky.
    It took Iolanthe some time to realize that she was shaking.
    They had been in a rush, selecting fresh carpets and other tools and supplies that they might need. And then there had been the anxiety, glancing behind—and all around—every few seconds to make sure that they hadn’t been spotted.
    All throughout, however, the image of wyverns plucking dead riders off one another flashed again and again in her mind. She had been calm enough as she described the Bane’s twisted reasons, but now, with immediate dangers fading, the anger that had been kept to a low simmer threatened to boil over.
    Her experience with Atlantis, though harrowing, had been on anextremely personal level: Master Haywood’s imprisonment, Titus’s Inquisition, Wintervale’s death, Atlantis’s relentless search for her in the Sahara—not to mention the horrifying knowledge that her capture would lead to her being used in sacrificial magic to prolong the Bane’s life. All this and more sometimes made it feel as if her family, her friends, and the Bane were the only ones involved in this struggle.
    Even though she knew otherwise.
    The sight of all the dead Atlanteans, however, at last brought the point home. Hundreds of soldiers who had served the Bane loyally and valiantly, dead because he could not allow even a smidgen of truth to tarnish his reputation at home. Because if they knew the truth about him, they—or at least some of them—would risk their own lives to end the travesty that was his rule.
    Titus nudged his carpet closer. “You all right?”
    â€œIt has always been about him, hasn’t it, this empire he has built?” she said, still seething. “He wanted control over the mage world not for the greater glory of Atlantis or the honor of the Atlanteans, but only so that he could immediately get his hands on the next great elemental mage.”
    â€œOh, I do not doubt he also enjoys power tremendously,” said Titus. “But I agree that in the end it has been driven by fear, by his unwillingness to leave this world because of what might await him in the next.”
    She glanced at him. He too was driven by a fear of dying. Andhe too had at times sacrificed personal integrity in order to further his goal. At the beginning of their partnership, a relationship then fraught with distrust, she had demanded angrily what the difference was between Atlantis and him, as they were both happy to hold her against her will.
    But beneath the Master of the Domain’s sometimes caustic manner and streak of ruthlessness was a