As far as the prince’s invitation was concerned, Issi’s “earliest convenience” would come eight days later.  In the time between, her mind curled around the memory of the note.  It was a good distraction from the vines that had started to plague the corners if her vision. 

She found herself searching for hidden meaning in the one sentence invitation.

          There didn’t seem to be any.

          Had he wanted information on the Grand Mage’s condition?  He hadn’t seemed interested in him at all.  Besides, what did it matter these days?  Her master had fallen from the king’s favor and that sort of gossip wasn’t worth writing a letter for.

          She circled the kitchens a second time.  There was no sign of him, and his workstation had been cleaned, or as close to clean as it ever got.  When she asked about, she received only a series of apologies.

          Maybe she’d taken too long and he’d lost interest.  Sometimes problems resolved themselves.

          “Who are you looking for?”

          “Don’t,” she whirled and stopped midsentence.  Unlike her disguise, the prince’s consisted mostly of well-applied make-up.  The only magic worked to change the color of his eyes and to darken his hair from brown to black. 

          “Are you just going to stare?  I worked very hard, to earn your curiosity,” he acted as he normally did, comfortable and self-assured. 

Her heart fluttered as she met his eyes and realized, uncomfortably, that she still adored him.  It pissed her off, “Why are you such an ass?”

          Surprise lurched across Ardein’s face, replaced quickly by amusement.

          Her irritation grew.  Gods above, she was sure Mihr-Did was fucking with her.

          The prince started towards his workstation.

          “Issi was it?”

          “Del,” she corrected shortly.

          The prince arched his brows, “Okay…do you want to—?”

          “What do you want?”

          He looked at her, like he suspected she might have been joking, “Del, I’ve already told you, I want you to work for…well, me.  I thought that’d be obvious.”

Issi frowned, what in Naya’s hells was he trying to accomplish? “What do you mean?”

          “I. Want. You. To—”

          Issi waved his response away, “No, that much was clear, but what do you mean by that?”

          He looked at her like she’d gone slow, “Work for me?”

          “I can’t help you with that,” she hissed softly, her eyes darted about their surroundings searching for eavesdroppers, “I thought you’d have figured that out.  If you want a Pet, you go through the proper channels.  In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t exactly have an abundance of rights in your stupid country.”

          His eyes lit with understanding, “I don’t want you as a Pet.  I want you as a mage.”

          Any thought that’d been under the delusion of completing itself stopped.  Issi’s mind went as blank and empty as the cloudless skies outside.

          “You’ve been writing the Grand Mage’s reports for the last six moons,” he continued softly, “I’d like to hire you for a project.”

          His words turned to smoke between her ears.  Issi found her head shaking.

          “I—, no, you…you have the wrong person.  I’m…I’m not what you thinking, think I—”

          “Del, I don’t think, I know,” he reached for her arm.  She was so stunned she hadn’t thought to move it away.  His thumb ran confidently across the hidden pocks and marks of her left hand, “Just how I know that the way you look is due to a very clever enchantment, leagues above anything Gadna could cobble together.”

          She pulled her hand away and clutched it to her chest.

          “I begging­—begged, I begged it off a student,” she tried, “I just—, I wanted,” her words tangled.  What had she wanted?  Where had all this been meant to go?

          Her heartbeat was a thready hum between her ears.  Was there a way out?  Some way to convince him that he saw wrong, that he knew wrong?

          “Let’s finish this conversation elsewhere,” she finished softly.

          “There are plenty of places in the royal wing—”

          “Not there,” she started at the sound of her voice.  It rang too loud.  A few heads peeked from their workstations.  Issi felt their stares burning into her skin.

She forced her shoulders down and convinced air into her lungs, “I—, uhm, there’s a place.  I know a place where we can talk.”

          The prince paused, his eyes skipped over her face before he nodded, “If that will make you feel more comfortable.”

          “It would.”  She didn’t think saying that his father was the thing of nightmares and she wanted nowhere near him, was a good way to keep the prince agreeable.

          He gestured for her to lead the way.

          Issi stuck to the main halls for as long as she dared, gathering her courage to ask him into the servant’s corridors.  He didn’t hesitate when she finally succeeded.

          Tiremalv didn’t strike her as very prince-like.  She’d imagined something closer to her master.  Proud and unwilling to compromise.  In many ways, it felt like she was still speaking with Ardein.

          Except he knew more than Ardein had.  And she felt moments from losing her breakfast from the nerves.

          The prince hummed tunelessly, eyeing halls curiously as he trailed behind her. 

He stopped when she’d started down a branch too dark to see down. Her hand running along the wall to guide her.

His humming stopped.

          Issi slowed when she missed the sound of his footsteps.  Her mouth opened, but what was there for her to say?  Her throat ran dry as the silence between them grew heavy.

          “That hall is very dark, Del,” he said at last.

          She hadn’t paid it much mind.  Her eyes picked through the blackness, “Uhm, yes, it is?”

          The prince’s hand crawled to his belt. He made no attempt to move forward.

          Lines of confusion appeared on her forehead, “If…if it was not dark, would you keep going?”

          “Did you really think I’d follow you down a pitch-black hall?”

          She shifted, searching for a response, “I’m sorry, it’s, I didn’t, I just didn’t think royals were afraid of the dark.  Can you cast light?”

          The prince frowned and shook his head.

          The torch twenty paces back was the obvious choice, but she wasn’t fond of anything larger than a candle flame, and she suspected that the prince had come armed.  Which meant he wasn’t going to allow for anything that’d limit his movement.  She couldn’t fathom what he imagined she might do, but the lack of trust bothered her.  He’d been the one who’d tricked her as if this were some little princeling game instead of her life on the line.

          Her fingertips warmed and she cast as quickly as she could manage, wincing as the spell stole heat up to her elbow.

          The ball of light illuminated the halls until they reached somewhere better populated and thus worth the hassle of keeping lit.  She dispelled it absently and kept them going until she found what she was looking for.

          Her hand pressed against rough lines of the false brick rousing the tired magic within it.  The torch behind them went out shortly before a chill ran through her, setting her teeth chattering.  The hidden door swung open. 

          The prince’s eyes had gone wide, “Del, how did you find this?”

          Issi shrugged, her hands already painting the air.  It was only a beat before she had the light casting balancing in her palm.  She walked through the doorway and waited for the prince to follow.

          He didn’t complain as he shadowed her up the narrow staircase.  When they reached the room with the chairs and pallet, his expression filled with realization.

          “This is how you—"

          “How did you know it was me?” her words wavered, she hadn’t been able to think of a way to convince him that he was wrong, not when he was so sure.  And not when she wanted so desperately to be seen. 

What if you could be more than a tool?  The promise of it still echoed between her ears.  Intoxicating.

          When the prince didn’t answer, she continued “The handwriting on the reports matched master’s, I even used Qasha’s stupid theories and systems, master’s tone, I never pull information from non-Qashan mages, even he looks over my submissions and finds them satisfactory, so, how?”

          A small frown tilted Ardein’s lips, “Gadna knows?”

          Issi fought the urge to roll her eyes, “Of course, he knows.  I mean not about this,” she gestured vaguely to herself, “But,” the casting in her hand flared briefly, “this, yes, he knows all about this.”

          “And the reports?”

          Her attention danced to the wall.  Exactly how much did the prince know about the Grand Mage’s condition? “He’s been…preoccupied lately, but the reports still needed to go out on schedule,” she shifted nervously, “He wanted to keep from falling out of the king’s favor for as long as possible.  I was the…obvious solution. Fat lot of good it did though.”

          “I was under the impression that he—”

          “It’s complicated,” she interjected impatiently, “How did you know it was me?”

          The prince sighed, “The reports changed.  You tried to copy his tone, but everything came out too…clever for Gadna.”

          He saw the confusion on her face and continued, “He wants to release enchantments as fast as possible to solve as many problems as possible but that makes his work boring.  Your enchantments are never that simple.”

          “So, his designs changed a bit, I don’t see how—”

          The prince continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “Around the same time the change occurred, rumors of the Grand Mage’s last student visiting the kitchens started again.  ‘A pretty woman, a little cautious, Egrean accent,’ I think is how they described you,” his brows knit together before he waved the thought away, “Really, you’re the type of person rumors are made for.  I figured the student might have something to do with the change.  Except…I couldn’t find any record of her.”

          Issi worried her lip, the prince grinned in response, “You can figure out how the rest went.”

          She shook her head, it’d been pure luck she’d even spoken to him at all, she’d just been searching for—

          “Oranges,” her voice rang thick with indignation, “Are you telling me you baited me with fruit?”

          Like a common rat.

          Joy danced in the prince’s eyes when he nodded, “You only asked for one thing when you went on your little escapades.  Oranges aren’t very popular in Qasha, I’m afraid, but it made it very easy to get you to talk to me.”

          Issi took a deep breath.  The prince’s easy-going delight press against her as she gathered herself.

          “That still didn’t make it me,” she felt like a music box, repeating the same melody over and over.

          “Well, no, but I started to suspect when I met you.  Smelled you, your master orders some awfully expensive perfumes,” he continued, “Which ruled out most of the servants because rumors about that would have spread like fire on kindling.  That, and I had a dream.”

          “A dream?” Issi echoed in disbelief.

          The prince nodded, “I know how it sounds,” he shrugged, “but it was right.”

          “How many people know?” she asked.

          “Just me.”

          “Why?”

          Confusion twisted his expression, “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

          Issi wasn’t entirely sure either.  Did she want to know what he needed her for?  Or did she want to know why he couldn’t have found her earlier when any of this could have made the barest bit of difference?

          She shook her head, “I can’t help you with whatever it is you’re doing.”

          “Del, you don’t even know what I’m asking.”

          “I know I can’t help you with it,” she reiterated, “It doesn’t matter what it is.”

          His nose scrunched in annoyance. 

          “Tell me why,” he ordered.  Issi stilled, something in her gave at the sound of the command.  Maybe some part of her had hoped they could remain friends after all this.

          She let the casting in her hand brighten, willing it to a warm orange that snuck tendrils into the far corners of the room, “I need the Grand Mage.”

          “What?”

          “I need Gadna, and…he needs me,” she mumbled, Ner had been taking care to reminder her of that since Issi had expressed doubts, “I can’t leave him.”

          “Del, are you stupid?  You’ve been to the healer 10 times this year alone,” he exclaimed, “he’s abusive, and—”

          “I know,” Issi bristled. “I’m not simple.  It’s very fucking clear that he’s abusive, princeling.  You may have eyes watching me, but I’ve lived it for eight years.  I know what he is.  And I know that I can’t. I can’t leave him.”

          The prince let out a harsh laugh, “Do you love him?”

          How could she explain how much she abhorred the man?  How often had she imagined killing him only to freeze at the thought of a world without him?  Were there even words in this stupid growling tongue to describe the certainty that she wouldn’t exist without him nearby?

          “I can’t leave him,” she repeated, “I need him.”

          “Why?”

          Because life without him was unimaginable, because the mere thought of his passing made the world dim, and her lungs want to collapse.

She swallowed, “Because, we’re dying. I’m sorry that you’ve wasted your time, and I’m sorry that I can’t help, but—”

          “Dying?” the prince rolled the word like it was some exotic sweet.

          Issi didn’t respond, her hands toyed with the casting, dimming and brightenng it nervously.  Her demise and her escapades were the only secrets she’d ever managed to keep from the Grand Mage. 

          And now both were lying bare before her, ten moons that could be summed up in a single sentence, I am Del and I am dying. 

          It was almost pathetic, except those secrets had brought her the closest to freedom she’d ever managed to get.

          “How are you dying?”

          “I thought it was obvious,” Issi echoed his earlier declaration, her voice too raspy and soft to manage bravado.  She smiled despite the failure because, gods, at least she’d something the prince hadn’t known. 

          He didn’t seem to find it as amusing as she did.  She barked a laugh that rang high with desperation.

          “I—”

          “The Mage’s Illness,” she answered dutifully, “I have two moons.  There’s no cure, at least, not one I’ve been able to find, though I suspect I’ve gotten pretty close.”