"STOP HIM!" François bellowed at Arthur.

"I can't!"

"Arthur! Forget the punters and stop him!"

"He's too close to the spell!"

The wobbly glass wall around the stage collapsed and the noise level multiplied as three hundred panicked audience members came unstuck.

But the magic Arthur and a number of other people were throwing at Ivan turned pale and sickly or veered off and vanished as it neared the magic bubble.

"Hey Ivan!"

It was Prince Ignatius.

Run, Toris wanted to yell, absurd, impossible, but: run away run away get ten miles, you might still be safe..!

But Ivan, who had been moving slowly as if wading, stopped a moment—either Arthur's spell or the Prince's words seeming to have reached him after all.

"Hey, Ivan, stop this alright?" the Prince continued, advancing half a step. "You don't want to be a prince, BELIEVE me, it's nothing but hard work—"

Ivan spun around and glared at him. "Just because you think so! Sounds like you're not worthy of the luck you were born with!" he spat, with real venom.

"Whoa, I'm not saying I'm more, more worthy than you or anything! That's exactly it, you know? You walk through there, and you'll be leaving you behind. No one will remember Ivan Braginsky, ever again. There'll be only Prince Ivan."

Ivan let out a laugh that was like a sob. He was sweating under the stage lights and shaking all over. "So what? You were right! Justyna was right! He didn't care about me! No one cares about me. But if I'm King... they'll have to!"

"It... oh boy, the degree to which it does not work like that..."

But Ivan wasn't listening to him now. "Even you, Toris," he cried, turning anguished eyes on him, "Even you—I thought you were my friend but you chose him!"

This was so monstrously unfair that Toris couldn't even think for a moment. His legs took a step forward without him.

"Ivan—"

Then he stopped. Then he did think. What was he going to say? Don't do it Ivan, I promise I'll be your best friend from now on if you just don't? I'll do anything to smooth things over... But hadn't that been what he'd been saying his whole life, to everyone, whether not they'd even demanded it of him?

...Maybe now with Feliks' life and the entire kingdom at risk was a strange time to stop being so obliging, but at the least it wasn't going to be the FIRST thing he tried!

"Ivan," Toris repeated, with all the will he could muster. "You can be better than this. Be better!"

Ivan stared at him for a second. Then he rubbed his sleeve across his eyes and turned back towards the bubble.

"Anyway," Toris yelled after him, "your sister—did you ever think that she might be sad you never spend any time with her anymore? But you don't see her behaving like this!"

"She came to find us!" Ignatius shouted too. "When she found out what you were doing, she didn't go the authorities or to the palace, she came to find Toris and me! Because she still cares about you—"

"Natasha?" asked Ivan, in bland surprise.

And Natasha plummeted from the rig above, landing heavily on Ivan and knocking him flat three feet from the bubble.

No one had seen how or when she got up there.

Arthur and François leapt towards the spell, as the handy technician fixed Ivan's arms and legs together too.

After a few moments examining the bulging centre of the magic, Arthur turned back to Toris, a worried expression on his face.

"Toris, I'm sorry. We need your help one more time. It seems that one of the strands holding this magic in place... is yours."

Toris felt dizzy again.

"It's alright—it's alright." François was at his side, supporting him as he wobbled on jelly legs.

He looked at the spell as he had at the spell around the Prince, and he could see it now.

And he remembered again. That night. His other wish over his cooking, in his quiet, still time.

I wish Ivan would just go off the royal court or whatever. I wish he'd never come to the Fortune at all.

"I did this?" He was trembling all over. "I did this, I nearly made Ivan the prince and and Feliks disappear?"

"No!" said François.

Toris gestured feebly, and his strand of magic came loose and flickered into nothing. It was that easy, now. But he was still shaking.

"You didn't know your powers," said Arthur, "didn't even know you had powers. Undirected magic like that takes the easiest shape—like bubbles connecting the shortest distance between two points, you know?—and very often that's to fall in with another spell that already in train... this is why there's all that bother about magical shielding..." He seemed to realise he was rambling. "But you see dear, this is why you really must come and train with us to learn to recognise and control your magic. Like you did just then. Not to mention it would be wonderful for us—we wouldn't be teaching you so much as you'd be teaching us!"

"Train with you?" Toris echoed.

For a moment, no one answered him. Arthur and François were dismantling the rest of the substiution spell.

Then François returned, and took his hands. "If you would? If you would honour us."

His mind was racing. When Marianne first said that he could perform magic, he'd doubted it and was scared. But now he had really done magic, on purpose, and it was good and it worked and he no longer doubted. But he was back in the theatre, this place where he'd been all his life, and with the royal family visiting—everything as it should be—and he was probably only going to ever see Feliks again from a distance at his coronation...

He couldn't go off and learn magic.

"Toris!" It was his mother, pushing through a bunch of actors to him. "Toris, you don't have to do anything; no one is making you,"—and the steely look in Justyna's eye dared even Arthur or François to contradict her—"It's up to you: do you want to go and learn magic?"

"Of course I do," Toris cried, "but then who will stay here!?"

"ME, you idiot!"

Raivis, his youngest brother, came crashing on to the stage.

"You're such a—self-absorbed—self-sacrificing—arrogant—martyr—! You never even realised, did you? I hate that school, writing is what I want to do, I want to write plays, and produce them too, but with you here and you're the eldest..."

Eduard, the middle child, followed at a more sedate pace. "He's right; he's great at magic, but he he's even better at writing. And it's certainly true he hates school."

"I wrote this play!" Raivis yelled, not finished. "And edited it too and everyone says it's good!"

"It's brilliant, Raivis," Toris said. "I'm so sorry, I had no idea—I had some idea but not enough. Of course you can stay here, if it's alright with Mum and Dad. And..." He looked at Arthur and François, hope welling up nside him, "and if it's alright with you, l'd love to learn to use my magic."

"I'm so proud of you," Justyna said. "Of all of you."

Everyone looked at Eduard. "What?" he asked. "I'm perfectly happy at the college. I'm going to become the greatest spell-singer there's ever been, same as I always said."

"I don't doubt it for a second," Justyna said. "I just came to say: Darius is going to announce an extra twenty minute interval to clean up and, ah, possibly get some people arrested, after which THE PLAY WILL CONTINUE. So," she raised her eyes and voice to the sundry actrors and crew still on stage. "Twenty minutes to curtain, everyone, starting act 3 scene 5 over from the top; twenty minutes!"

"Before we move on completely from the subject of magicians," Prince Ignatius said loudly over the noise of shouted orders and shifting scenery. "I have a royal appointment to make, if that's alright with everyone."

François sighed dramatically. "Must you?"

"I mean, yes I really must."

"Botheration."

Arthur wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Love, you've more than earned it."

"I know I've earned it! But I have gone to rather a lot of trouble to avoid it at the same time." Then her sulky expression cleared, and François shrugged magnificently and smiled. "Very well! I accept—on one condition. Let it be a joint appointment."

"Between 'François and Marianne'?" Ignatius asked, raising his eyebrows.

"No. And let it be Marianne—much as responsibility would probably do the Fantastic François good, precedent is important. I shall live my accustomed life of feckless ease, and the appointment shall be shared between Marianne and Arthur."

"Oh, alright!" said Ignatius, quite unconcerned. "Marianne and Arthur it is."

"I don't know if anyone noticed," said Arthur peevishly, "but I did freeze time in a local radius back there. Not to blow my own trumpet or anything."

"You never do, darling, that's precisely your trouble," said François. "That's why you need me to do it for you."

And that was almost everything.

The rest of the palace constabulary had been summoned and had arrived and taken away Zima, the treacherous guards, and Ivan. Prince Ignatius himself had called for clemency in his case, and Toris felt happier to know Ivan wouldn't be treated too harshly. He also, however, felt this didn't mean that he should be given another chance to work in the theatre having, after all, spectacularly ruined a play performed before royalty.

Ignatius hugged his sister. Who had to be briefly torn away from shaking Natasha's hand and congratulating her. Hedvika seemed to have adopted Natasha. Who was looking almost flushed, much less ghost-like than usual. Toris really hoped she would be alright now.

And so... what remained.

Ignatius rejoined Toris at the side of the stage. No one was paying even the Prince much mind for a minute in all the bustle.

"Can we talk?"

"Love to," said Toris, and hoped it didn't sound sarcastic. "I mean, yes, of course, your Highness." He was still dazed.

"I was confused, my memory was all fuddled by being a cat. But I. I did remember things sooner than I told you I did."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Toris asked. "Didn't you trust me?" Not that that would have been so unreasonable! he chided himself, You'd only known each other for, what, a day?

"No, no, nothing like that, I just. I don't know. Didn't want to pressure you, I guess. I've been getting a lot of that lately, as you might imagine. And after that, it would be have been So Drama of me: the prince is lost, oh and by the way, I'M THE PRINCE?! Come on."

François, Arthur and Princess Hedvika had drifted over to stand near them again.

"—and, and my name really IS Feliks!" he continued. "—it's what my tutors called me, and Vika, because I kept doing stupid things and not dying you know—so I wasn't lying about that, it really did feel like a sign when you all called me Lucky. Oh Toris, please don't call me Ignatius and ugh certainly not your highness!"

"We knew of course," said Arthur. "We did a locating spell for the Prince while the two of you were out mushrooming, and those things may be tricksy and unreliable, but they're able to get a fairly conclusive result when the person in question is a scant five hundred yards away. We just assumed you had a good reason for keeping it quiet!"

Feliks shrugged helplessly. "After that I was just so scared. I felt like, if I acknowledged it I'd be done for, so I just..."

"You could have gone away," Toris said. "In the cart, when Arthur said about being near the spell would erase your life..." (And that, Toris realised now, had probably been precisely why Arthur had said it, to give him a chance.) "I remember your face, I thought you were just travel sick."

"Just jumped out the cart and run for it? If I'd done that, I wouldn't be much worthy to be king, would I? And... I definitely wouldn't be deserving of that happy, normal life here we talked about, here with you. "

There was a pause.

Then Justyna stepped up and said, "If you think life in the theatre is normal, young man..." which made everyone laugh.

"You did pretty great," said Vika. "But, sugar plum fairies, Feliks, why didn't you tell me what happened to you? Why didn't you come find me?"

"I was going to," said Feliks, "I was going to today, going to find some way. I couldn't go near the palace though? could I? Zima would recognise that cat—why did they cat me instead of kill me anyway?"

Arthur hummed. "I have a morbid theory about that. Quite apart from any guilt he might have felt, it was in Zima's interests for you to wander off. No prisoner to keep, no... body to dispose of. Even a transfigured one would leave traces."

"Arthur darling," said François, "you always know how to lighten the mood."

"Ew. Forget I asked." Feliks glared around at the small crowd that had reformed around him. "Hey, can me and Toris like actually talk a minute? Alone? Thanks."

"So..." Feliks began.

"I suppose I won't be seeing you again," said Toris, and it felt awful. "Do you want to at least... I could show you round the theatre before you go?"

Feliks' scoffed, awkwardness suddenly falling from his royal shoulders. "You're not getting rid of me that easy! Why do you think I appointed those two royal magicians? I intend to see a lot of you in future." He grinned.

"I mean," said Toris, feeling his own mouth turn up into a smile again, "There was I naively assuming you appointed them because they're both sort of extremely good at magic."

"Oh, that too, that too, but it's not like we've needed an official royal magician before, I don't need to Appoint them just for that. I am going to be king, you know. I could see them any time I felt like."

"Then, you could see me any time you feel like, your Kingness."

"I'm very glad you agree, and, seriously: Kingness?"

"You didn't like Highness," Toris pointed out.

"I wasn't aware of the dire alternatives! Anyway. Show me round another time. Next time we both visit. Right now, I want to watch the rest of the play."

They went to take their seats together.