“Aye,” the prince said. “That is something I have never tried. My father told me that if you changed your eyes, all that you saw changed as well. Thus what you saw was either an illusion or it was real. You wouldn’t know which and that would lead you to make mistakes.”
“Do you think that is the reason he couldn’t sense you? He’d changed his eyes and they didn’t see what they should have seen?”
“It makes sense. Do you want to live in that black tower?”
She actually shuddered. “I would never stop fighting to get out of that black fortress of his.”
He snorted at that. “Good. You have some sense, at least enough for a witch. Don’t forget, though, that you’re here with me, and you know what that could mean.”
“Aye, ashes to ashes, both of us.”
“That didn’t amuse me at all. Now, the cloak you brought in here to you. I want you to try to send it back out.”
Brecia drew in a deep breath. She cleared her mind as she’d been taught by her mother, her mother’s mother, and all the ghosts who had lived with all of them.
Then it became clear to her. They were inside a small hole of space, a bubble, although it wasn’t round. Rather, it stretched upward to curve over the highest point of Mawdoor’s black fortress. Now that she saw their prison, she began her search. Time passed. She found nothing.
“I can see our prison,” she said.
“Send your cloak through. Watch where it goes.”
She raised her wand, closed her eyes just a moment, and her cloak was gone.
He said, “Now call it back.”
She did. Her cloak fell into her hands. “But it just seemed to appear. I can’t find a weakness, a seam, nothing. It seems impenetrable.”
The prince sniffed the airless air. “It makes no sense. I have decided what we must do, Brecia. There is no choice. Mawdoor could destroy us at his whim. We must risk it.” He drew a deep breath. “You will touch the tip of your wand to mine.”
She whirled around, appalled. “Oh, no, we cannot do that. I have heard it could destroy the earth, it could bind me to you forever.”
“There are certainly worse things than being bound to me.”
“Of course there are worse things, you fool. That is just the beginning of the things it could do to us. I have also heard it could make us mortal. No, we cannot take the chance.”
“All old witch’s tales. Wizards never take any of that nonsense seriously. End of the world? That is absurd, Brecia. Make us mortal? Beyond absurd.”
“What about binding me to you?”
“Ah, now that doesn’t seem at all absurd. Enough, Brecia. I don’t know how much time we have left to us. I know to my very core that it would give us the power to break through this ridiculous bubble.”
She thought about it, hard.
“You’re carrying on like a witch looped in her own curses.”
“Stop with your infernal insults against witches. Without a witch you wouldn’t exist, you miserable fool who got us trapped in this wretched invisible bubble.”
“I think it is more of a dome. Look at the shape. Listen to me. If you were alone, he would force you to mate with him. At least since I am here, you have a chance to escape him. We won’t know what happens when wands touch until we do it.”
“No, not yet. There has to be another way.”
He was silent. He let the idea slide away. She was right, it was a huge risk. There had to be another way. But the curved dome over their heads seemed impenetrable. He touched his palm to it and kept it there as he rose, tracing its outline until it curved high over his head and began to curve downward again.
A perfect dome, seamless. He stayed at the highest point of the dome, and touched his fingertips to it again. He felt it pulse, but it wasn’t warm. He pressed his palm hard against it and felt it turn icy cold. Nothing there, he thought, there was really nothing at all there. Now he could see the graybeards far be
low going about their tasks. But they hadn’t seen them before. What had happened? Couldn’t Mawdoor hold the illusion together?
He called out. They didn’t hear him. What had he expected, anyway?