The Perilous Sea Read Free Page A

Your Highness, have you?”
    Nearly five months ago, at a party not unlike this one, Lady Callista had administered truth serum to Titus on behalf of Atlantis—and she had done so via Aramia, whom Titus had considered a friend. If Aramia had any regrets concerning her action, Titus had not been able to sense it.
    â€œI have seen the new addition,” he said coolly. “It was completed two years ago.”
    Aramia reddened, but her smile was persistent. “Allow me to point out some features you may not have noticed. Won’t you come with me, sire?”
    He considered refusing outright. But a stroll away from the canopy did have some merits—at least he would not have to speak to anyone. “Lead the way.”
    Defeat of the Usurper, the largest and most elaborate of the ninety-nine fountains of the Citadel, was the size of a small hill, featuring scores of wyverns being felled by Hesperia the Great’s elemental powers. The long reflecting pool before it extended almost to the edge of the manmade headland on which the Citadel sat. Cliffs dropped three hundred feet straight down to the pounding surf of the Atlantic. In the distance, a pleasure craft, all its sails furled, bobbed upon the sunlit sea.
    Aramia glanced back. Titus’s retinue, eight guards and four attendants, had followed them. But now, with a wave of his hand, they slowed and stayed out of earshot.
    â€œMother will be angry with me if she knew what I am about to do.” Aramia reached inside the fountain and flicked the rippling surface. “And she won’t admit it but she is quite frightened by all the meetings with investigators from Atlantis. They make her take truth serum and they are . . . they are not nice at all.”
    â€œThat is what it is like to run afoul of Atlantis.”
    â€œBut isn’t there something you can do for her, after what she has done for you?”
    Titus raised a brow. After what Lady Callista had done for him ? “You overestimate my influence.”
    â€œBut all the same—”
    â€œThere you are!” came a clear, musical voice. “I have been looking for you all over.”
    The young woman who approached from the far side of the fountain was eye-wateringly beautiful—skin the color of brown sugar, a face of almost exaggerated perfection, and a cascade of black hair that reached to the backs of her knees.
    Aramia stared, agape, as if unable to believe that there existed one who rivaled her mother in sheer loveliness.
    Titus, who had always been wary of beauty of such magnitude, thanks to his proximity to Lady Callista growing up, had moved past the woman’s features to examine her overrobe. One sometimes heard overrobes ridiculed as resembling upholstery, but this one looked to be actually made from upholstery—from an elaborate lampshade, he corrected himself, with all the tassels and fringes still attached.
    â€œWould you mind giving me a moment with His Highness?” She spoke to Aramia, her tone courteous but unmistakably firm.
    Aramia hesitated, glancing at Titus.
    â€œYou may leave us,” said Titus. He had nothing more to say to her.
    Aramia walked away, looking back all the while.
    â€œYour Highness,” said the young woman.
    She had addressed him without first being addressed by him. Titus did not hold to such nonsense when he was at school, but here he was in his own palace, at a diplomatic reception, no less, where the guests loved such etiquette almost as much as they loved their own mothers, possibly more.
    It occurred to him that while she could pass for a member of the Kalahari ambassador’s entourage, he had not seen her earlier, among the crowd under the canopy—and a woman who looked as she did would not have gone unnoticed.
    Not that it had never happened before, a mage crashing a palace party without proper credentials. But the Citadel was on high alert, was it not, after the events of early