Three months after his st patient recovered and six months after the Queen recovered, Simon received two ued pieces of news. The first was that Elthena regnant, and the sed was that she was banishing him from the kingdom.

  “What?!” Simon blurted out. Either piece of news would have shocked him, but the two of them together pletely bowled him over.

  “You heard me,” she answered calmly. “As much as I might love you, you ’t be here when I start to show, my dearest Simon.”

  “Why?” he asked, genuinely fused. “Everyone retty cool with the whole sort thing, but after the whole pgue deal, I don’t think that anyone will objee—”

  “No one would object,” she agreed, interrupting him. “It’s worse than that. They’d demand that we marry.”

  “What’s s with that?” he asked. “I’d happily marry you. We could—”

  “It’s out of the question,” she shot back.

  “Because of the prophecy?” he asked.

  “Because of the prophecy,” she agreed.

  Simon sighed heavily. He’d expected this insanity to resurface again one day, but not like this. He’d never expected anything like this.

  “I don’t accept this,” he said ftly, trying to stay calm.

  “I didn’t expect you to,” she said, leaning forward to hug him, “But still, it must be done.”

  “You ’t make me, you know,” he said. “I could fight your entire royal guard to keep them from esc me out of the building.”

  “And with enough of your dark powers, I expect you’d win,” she agreed, “and then I’d have no choice but to throw myself into the sea.”

  That terrible turn of phrase hurt more than he could have thought possible, and he was quiet for several seds as he let it pass. He khat his Elthena was strong-willed, but he had no idea that she was a zealot about this. Instead of freaking out, he tried aactibsp;

  Simohe half hour slowly going through everything they knew about the supposed curse. Simon reminded her that Brogan had broken free of his volic prison without any help from her and that there was no reason to expect that the whole thing was a myth at this point. Still, she would not be denied.

  “What if I go kill the Basilisk that haunts your dead city,” he said, “Then will you see reason?”

  “I would never dream of putting you in such danger!” she excimed. “No, this is for the best, I think. The city will be safe, you will be free to be a hero once more, and our child—”

  “Our child will need a father as well as a mother,” he shot back.

  “Oh, Simon,” she sighed, “I wish I could marry you. You’re a good man. Maybe even the best man I've ever known, but it's never going to happen; it 't.”

  They argued oopitil dinner, but he wasn’t done. Not by a long shot. There was no way he was letting this go. At least, he didn’t pn to. However, sometime between the custard and port wihey had for dessert, getting up for bed in the m, Simon passed out hard. He remembered being really drowsy and going to bed early. What he didn’t remember was how he got on a ship because he could definitely feel the wood beh him rog gently from side to side.

  That bitch! He thought as he groggily put it all together.

  He instantly regretted it, of course. One did not call the mother of your children a bitch, even in your own head, but still, he was furious. Somehow, he should have expected this. She’d drugged him a him somewhere far away without so much as saying goodbye. He hadn't eve ing.

  No, that was goodbye, he realized betedly as he started to stir and realized he was bound and gagged. The hug, those tears. That was her goodbye. Suddenly, he felt terrible; all he’d felt in those st moments was anger.

  So, he forced himself to calm down as he came to grips with that decision. She had her reasons, and even if he disagreed with them violently, he uood them. He also uood that she couldn’t actually stop him from ing bao matter where she sent him, the world was a finite pce, and he’d already walked and mapped a good part of it. Three months? Six months? Depending on where it was she’d shipped him, he might eve ba time for the birth.

  Slowly, his mode was improving, and by the time a sailor came down to che him, he was resolved. He could fix this. He’d sail back to the other side of the world, sughter the basilisk, and bris head as a baby shift.

  “Now her majesty said ye’d be a might perturbed like when you woke up,” the young man said, “She said you could hurt us pretty bad, and we should make sure you’d calmed down first before we’d untied yht?”

  Simon nodded, not sure what else to do.

  “The captain has a scroll to give you from her,” the sailor tinued, reag down to untie Simon’s gag. “Along with some other details, but you’ll want to speak with him about that.”

  When Simon’s gag was removed, he flexed his jaw and pted what the sailor had done. She clearly hadn’t warhem that he was a warlock or that he possessed powers they could barely prehend. She couldn’t have, though, or they would have killed him themselves, which meant that this man had just dohe dumbest thing in his whole damn life. He could cut a bloody swath through this whole crew if he wahe only thing that held him back was his own morals. Still, for a moment, he thought about it. He couldn't help it.

  So, he resisted and instead looked up at the man and said, “I’m good. We’re good. Just take me to the captain and tell me where the hell it is she sent me, anyway.”

  The sailor smiled nervously at that and deyed a moment before he cut Simon’s bonds and released him. After that, the two went up on deck, where he found himself well out of sight of nd, which meant they were at least half a day underway and well out to see.

  The captain was a gruff man almost Simon’s age who took a look at him and then, uncharacteristically, smiled. “You know when Her Highold me I’d be taken a mule onboard this ship, I almost refused, but when I heard it was for the Miracle Worker of Ionar, well, now how could I refuse that man whatever it was he wanted?”

  “Mule?” Simon asked, fused.

  “Aye,” he nodded. “In the hold along with the rest of your things. A right ky old thing, too.”

  “Ohhhh, Daisy,” Simon said as he suddenly figured out he wasn’t being called a stubborn old mule. Elthena had probably sent just about everything he might need with him. If she’d po send him away, she would have pnned well. It was one more reason to love her.

  “Aye,” the captain agreed. “That would be the one.”

  The two of them talked for a while after that, and when they saw that he intended no violehe sailors and their captaiually loosened up around him. What did she tell them about me? He wondered.

  Simon learhat he’d saved the life of the captain’s wife during the epidemic. The man was more than a little grateful for that and was happy to tell him exactly where they were going, even though he wasn’t supposed to until they were closer to their destination. He was even happy to alter pns slightly if Simon would rather go somewhere else.

  “Within reason, you uand,” the captain expined. “The Queen would have my balls if I took you back to anywhere in Ionia so that ain’t happening.”

  The ship was already on the way to the northern kingdoms, which was the right way as far as he was ed. He told the mahink about it, but really, there were only a few port cities up that way, including one pce that he definitely wasn’t going: Schwarzenbruck.

  At least, that’s what he thought at first, but in the days that followed, as he was having a maudlin versation with the ship's captain about the nature of life ah, the man said, “I really love the sea, I do. The only thing that bothers me about this life is the impermanence of it. You ’t see where you’ve e from or the way to get to where yoing, and one day, when you catch a bad storm and sih the waves, no one will even notice your passing except those you left behind at port. It's a tragic thing.”

  Simon nodded along, sympathizing with that. If anyone knew impermanence, he did. However, when he y awake in his hammock that night, he had a horrible thought. If what he’d done hadn’t been good enough to finish this level, thehena and the life they’d lived together would disappear in the blink of an eye. If he did, though, well, then he could e ba any other life he wanted. Hell, he thought. I could time my arrival for the very day she sent me away and surprise her.

  That would be clever, of course, but perhaps a bit too clever. More than anything, he thought about the grave for Freya that did and how, no matter how many times he visited Crowvar or slew Varten, it would never appear.

  That whole life, from the way he’d ed her to the crude little ring he’d made to the way he hadn’t been able to save her, had never happened, and the fact that her missing tomb would never appear was a terrible testament to that.

  That, more than anything, was what ged his mind. In the end, he was going to have to go back to Schwarzenbruck because that was the only pce he could make sure these events were locked in just in case the worst happened.