She hesitated. "Why are you acting so strange?"
"Take my hand, Aurelia."
She did, and I pulled her closer to me, putting one arm around her waist to ensure she would stay with me as we left. I drew in her scent and tried to keep my focus on Radulf and where we needed to go.
"Get us out," Radulf mumbled.
"I will get out," the Mistress growled at me. "And when I do, I will find you."
"Hush!" I said.
Aurelia started to protest that she hadn't said anything, but I only shook my head at her. Then I closed my eyes and pictured Radulf's atrium. Despite the darkness in here, it was morning in Rome. A beautiful, warm autumn morning.
Disappearing from one place to another felt like squeezing oneself into a vise to be small enough to vanish. As hard as that was with one person, or even two, now I was trying to squeeze three of us into the same space. All while continuing to heal Radulf and keeping the Mistress out of my head.
The last sound in my head before we disappeared was the Mistress again. "You will kneel to me."
If she said anything more, it became lost in the journey from the cave. Finally, there was something about disappearing that I didn't hate. I just hoped we'd end up somewhere far enough away that her voice couldn't reach me.
When Aurelia and I arrived in the atrium, we fell apart from each other, both of us reeling from the pressure of being squeezed so close. I immediately rolled back to my knees to check on Radulf. His entire body was shaking, as if his soul was still catching up from the body's disappearance.
I pressed both hands onto his chest, sending him all the magic I could until the shaking stopped. He was breathing more easily than before, but there wasn't much life left in him.
"Mother, I heard noises --" Livia rushed into the atrium and stopped when she saw the three of us on the ground.
"Your grandfather needs to be in his bed." Aurelia was crouched beside me, balancing Radulf's limp head in her hands. "Help us carry him there."
I could have done it alone, but what strength I still had was needed elsewhere. We stood to lift Radulf, then heard someone else behind us.
"You did it." The flat tone of my mother's voice revealed her conflicted feelings. Obviously, she would be happy that I had returned, as well as Aurelia. But she was hardly bursting with joy to see Radulf with us.
"We need your help," I said.
After a heavy sigh, my mother got beside Livia to carry Radulf's feet, while Aurelia balanced his head and shoulders. I went in the middle, keeping both hands under Radulf as we walked, to take the bulk of his weight.
Radulf's bed was as fine as any place an emperor might have to sleep, and even lying on the soft mattress seemed to make him rest more comfortably. I sat beside him, continuing to work on healing his many injuries, while Aurelia dimmed the candlelight in the room and covered his windows. Livia soon left, telling us she would speak to the servants in Radulf's home about protecting the place from any Praetors.
And my mother stood beside me, her arms folded in disapproval. "You're wet," she said. "And your tunic is burned."
I smiled up at her. "It would've been more burned if I hadn't been all wet."
"And this is a good thing?"
"If I come back, then I think it's a very good thing."
She didn't even pretend to enjoy the joke. "You think because you made it back that now our problems are over? That you escaped the wrath of the Praetors, or that dragon? Have you escaped the wrath of Rome itself?"
My smile fell. "I know this isn't over, Mother. But I'm getting stronger, and smarter about how I fight them. I can win this."
She knelt on the floor beside me. "You can't win. That's what I'm trying to tell you. The price for using magic is high. Every wave of your hand, every time you disappear, and whatever else you can do that I haven't yet seen, there is a price for all of it! Your father understood that -- it's why he didn't use his magic in Gaul, even when he could have. Once he did, you know how it ended. That was the price he had to pay."
"I won't make the same mistakes."
Mother took one of my hands and held it in her own. "You are too reckless with magic, like your grandfather. Since you first received the Divine Star, how many times has magic almost cost you your life?"
I lowered my eyes, hoping she hadn't already seen the answer in them. I couldn't count the number of times, even if I wanted to.
She ran her fingers over the Malice on my forearm, tracing the outline of the wolf carved into the silver. "Please, Nic, destroy this Malice, and the bulla around your neck. Or they will destroy you."