Chapter 32

A s Baron practiced in the yard, a crow landed on the fence beside his current dummy.

"Broken a second one yet?" the crow asked. It was Corvin's voice, no mistake, though edged with the cackling sound of a crow.

Baron gave him a sharp look, glancing around to be sure they were alone as the boy transformed with a quick puff of mist that left swirling trails in the air. He was grinning from ear to ear.

Recognizing a look of mischief, Baron asked, "What have you done?"

The boy's smile turned nervous. "First of all, it was an accident."

Baron leaned his practice sword against the fence and devoted his full attention to the matter at hand. No doubt he would soon have to make peace with a snarling cat.

"I ... well, I went to deliver your letter, as usual."

Baron tilted his head, noting that the canister was noticeably absent. "You lost it along the way?"

"No, I—oh, I guess I must have ... dropped the container. In Aria's room."

"You went in Aria's room?" Baron felt the beginnings of a headache.

"I wasn't being nosy! Well, maybe I guess I was because when I first arrived, I saw her shove this box out a window, then I saw she was crying —"

Baron ached to hear of Aria's tears, but the greater feeling was his dread at the undercurrent he sensed beneath Corvin's words. The boy danced around something serious.

"What happened?"

Corvin licked his lips. He leapt from one foot to the other, like a bird preparing for flight. Baron waited.

"I . . . spoke . . . to her."

"You—" All of Baron's worst fears came true at once, strangling his voice.

Corvin rushed to say, "It's fine! It was an accident, I swear, and I only said her name, but she's smart, and she slammed the window closed and demanded I reveal myself as a shapeshifter, and then I did—"

Baron groaned, closing his eyes and pressing the heels of his palms to his forehead, though it did nothing to contain the growing ache. Corvin's voice kept right on going.

"— and she's fine with it ."

Breathing deeply, Baron struggled to regain his voice while his imagination conjured soldiers marching on the Reeves estate.

"What exactly," he managed, "did she say?"

Corvin related how Aria had hidden him from the guards, how she teased him with one of Leon's favorite insults. It was like something out of a dream, though Baron had experienced very few dreams that did not quickly reveal their true nature as nightmares. Had it been an act—a way to remove Corvin from the palace while she decided in earnest how to respond?

"Corvin, you could have been killed ."

"I know." Usually when confronted by his own mistakes, Corvin shrank, but now he stood tall, relaxing against the fence. "I know that's why you never told her, why you never would tell her, but it worked out."

"Even if that's true"—and Baron could not escape his doubt—"a lucky result doesn't justify a life-and-death gamble."

"That's not what Father taught me."

Baron frowned.

Corvin turned, bracing his hands on the wooden fence before hopping up to perch on the top railing. The late-autumn breeze rustled his dark hair, and even Baron relaxed as it passed over his sweat-soaked neck.

"When Father took me and Leon to Port Tynemon for our birthday last year, Leon wouldn't go out on the water, but Father hired a fisherman to take me out for a few hours. I think Leon might have started digging my grave right there on the beach; he was so certain I would drown."

Though Leon kept a stricter bathing schedule than anyone else in the house, he avoided open water as if it carried plague. His very first transformation had come when Corvin pushed him in a lake.

"Father said it was true," Corvin went on, "that I might drown. But he said people have to face decisions every day, and they have to know consequences come, death included. He said, ‘A tree puts down roots and hopes they hold against the storm. But either way, the growing is worth the risk.'"

It was exactly the sort of thing their father would have said, and Baron's heart ached hearing it.

Corvin smiled into the breeze. "When I came back to shore un-drowned and wanting to sail the whole world, he said, ‘I guess it must have been worth the risk.'"

Baron had a sudden fear that Corvin was taller than he'd ever been before, closer to grown than he'd ever imagined.

And the boy certainly wasn't wrong.

After a sigh, Baron climbed the fence one post over, and they sat together in companionable silence.

"I've been looking for Sarah," he finally admitted.

Corvin's eyes went wide. "Mom? Did you find her? Is she ..."

"I think I did." Baron tensed, gripping the post beside him. "I think she's in Northglen."

The one place he never would have looked, if not for Aria's mention of a pale blonde Stone Caster, if not for the way he couldn't force the description from his mind no matter how he tried.

"Why would she ..." Corvin's voice trailed off. Then it grew small. "Mom doesn't have magic."

None that she'd ever revealed. But Baron remembered one time, shortly after his father and Sarah married, when a stomach sickness had passed through the household. Though his father quickly recovered, Baron deteriorated. The physician despaired of his recovery because nothing could cut the pain. In the end, Sarah, his new stepmother but still a stranger to him in many ways, had gathered Baron into her arms like a real mother and sang a melody he'd never heard, soft as wool, gentle as a breeze. He'd slept the next day straight.

"I sometimes wondered," Baron said quietly. "At the beginning."

He'd written it off as wishful thinking. After all, Sarah had no witch's mark.

"Great." Corvin scoffed, a sound so raw it hurt Baron's throat just to hear it. "Great. She says we're damned. Look at her."

"She may have a good reason for—"

"Don't defend her," he snapped. "Leon always defends her."

Baron sighed. "I think Sarah may have been the Stone Caster working with Morton on Aria's curse. Though I can't imagine how she would have escaped a brand."

Corvin scratched his wrist, then curled his fingers. "So if the king ever breaks Northglen ..."

"I fear the worst. On the other hand, if she is there, perhaps I could reason with Sarah on Aria's behalf. I planned to send a letter to Northglen today."

Corvin hopped down from the fence. "If she's really there, if she really did it ... tell her to stay. I don't want her to come home."

Tightness gripped Baron's chest. "I began looking for her because I thought you and Leon would be better off with at least one parent at home. On my own, I've failed you at every turn, first by trapping you with the title, then by involving myself with a royal. You and Leon are in more danger of discovery than ever—you have been discovered—thanks to me."

Corvin frowned. He reached up with one hand, pinching all his fingertips close together, and then used it like a beak to peck Baron on the head.

Baron squinted, rubbing away the faint throb.

"That's what I think of that." Corvin smirked as if he'd been wickedly clever.

Baron resisted an eye roll. At least it was comforting to see the boy shed some of that disconcerting maturity.