Chapter 45

B aron had never visited Morton Manor before. The square building was all hard edges and imposing pillars, pale as exposed bone, without any of the greenery marking his own estate. The front entry led to a long hallway with branching doors, and it might have been a maze for how identical each door looked. Widow Morton had posted her supporters like sentinels.

Walking with one hand on his sword, Baron scanned the grim faces lining the hall. Richard Langley escorted them past four branded Casters, including Weston Knowles, who looked away under Baron's gaze. There was no sign of Sarah.

Langley led them to a ballroom where Widow Morton stood, dressed in full black, with a slanted veil that shadowed her eyes.

Baron felt a momentary pang of sympathy. Though he'd abandoned his own mourning attire, it did nothing to erase the loss of his father. He could not excuse the woman's actions, but he understood the quiet madness of grief.

Widow Morton spoke with a flat, emotionless tone. "You've roused my entire household, Highness, so I assume it's for good reason. A special event, perhaps? I believe we could all be persuaded to attend a royal funeral."

Pushing his thumb against the guard, Baron lifted his sword an inch from its oiled scabbard.

"Stand down, Reeves," Morton snapped. "I have no desire to fight my own, no matter how questionable their choice of company."

"You've fought me from the start. Every action you've taken these last months has only harmed Casters."

"And the actions of our country's leadership has done you greater favors?"

"Yes, actually." Baron glanced at Aria, who looked pale but determined. "At least one of them. I suggest you hear her out."

"We've spoken before. I've never been impressed."

Aria drew in a deep breath and stood with head high. "In our first negotiation, I made a mistake. I was speaking for my father, even after you asked for my voice. I'm ready to give it now."

The widow smiled, an empty expression. "Too late."

She gestured toward a pillar, and a young girl as thin as Corvin and surely near his age inched into view. After glancing at Baron and Aria, the girl hurried to the widow's side.

"You've not met my daughter, Leticia." Widow Morton braced her hands on the girl's shoulders. "Be proper now, Lettie, that's a good girl."

Lettie swept a curtsy, though her wide eyes appeared terrified.

Baron hadn't been expecting the girl, but Aria didn't seem surprised.

"Lettie is the reason you've done all this, isn't she?" she said. "She's twelve now, and you didn't want her branded as you had to be. You didn't want her to suffer for magic the way Charlie did."

The widow's eyes hardened. "You've been studying my family, I see, but I have no interest in your grasping conclusions. Lettie, please show Her Highness the proof she knows nothing at all."

Lettie stepped forward, raising both hands. A Caster, Aria had implied, but the girl was too far away to touch either of them—unless she was a Stone Caster and intended simply to bring the house down around them all.

A hazy blue glow wafted from the girl's fingertips, like the mist of transformation. But she did not change shape.

Instead, a blue circle of light appeared around Baron, and before he could do more than gasp, it swallowed him whole.

The third Casting type. A Portal Caster.

No matter how many times Leon called him an idiot, Baron had never truly felt like one until the blue light transported him to a windowless basement room. He could blame it on the fact that he'd never gone head-to-head with another magic user, never needed to anticipate what attacks could come; he could even blame it on the fact that Portal Casting was meant to be a myth . But the reason wasn't terribly important.

What mattered was that he'd left Aria alone.

A lamp affixed to the wall illuminated the cold gray stone of the floor and walls. The wooden beams above echoed with the sound of footsteps.

Between Baron and the single staircase leading upward stood a woman with pale blonde hair, like Leon's.

Sarah looked older, and Baron's mind had to adjust to the fact that they'd spent four years apart. Four years that seemed to contain every major event of his life—accepting the mantle of adulthood, losing his father, falling for Aria. He'd been foolish to expect his stepmother to look exactly as he remembered; they were both different people.

She caught his gaze, her brown eyes a perfect mirror of the twins', and she sighed.

"When you sent your letter," she said, "I had a feeling we'd end up like this. You're so much like Marcus."

"Hello to you, too, Mother."

That stopped her short, and he took a grim satisfaction from her wince. Though he'd usually called her Sarah, there had been times—times of vulnerability, illness, joy—when he'd slipped. She was the only mother he'd ever known.

"You invited me here," Baron said tightly. "I came."

"I invited you as part of what we're doing. Instead, you marched in with the enemy."

"The girl you call an enemy is the girl I love. I'm going back to her. Don't make me go through you."

" Love ?" Sarah's eyes widened, and she gaped for a moment before recovering. "She's taken you in with promises, no doubt, but they aren't real."

"Unlike your promises. ‘Freedom for Casters' was, I believe, what Widow Morton promised Edith and others. So far, as a direct result of the actions taken by those here, I have experienced increased prejudice and even house arrest. I fail to see the freedom."

"That isn't fair, Baron. We are in the middle of change, not at the end of it."

His breath caught; he hadn't expected her to still call him Baron.

He remembered the first time Sarah had visited the Reeves estate. He'd been six, and his father had awkwardly explained something about women and courtship before simply calling Sarah Hatcher a "special friend."

When she arrived, she smiled at Baron in a way that seemed both reserved and thoughtful. Trustworthy. When he told her his father called him "Baron," she didn't laugh. She didn't even hesitate.

"You will be in the future," she said, as if it were the most logical thing in the world. "May as well try the title on early."

By the same logic, Baron asked if she'd tried on the Reeves title. Though Father had choked at the question, Sarah had shared the mischievous joke for what it was and responded, "‘Baroness Sarah Reeves.' That does have a certain majesty, doesn't it? Perhaps one day."

"One day" had come in a matter of months, and the twins soon after that. Baron had thought he might hate sharing his father with anyone; instead, he loved his new family with the same fierceness—the same rightness—he felt inside when magic called. Sarah wasn't afraid of him, and she wasn't afraid to let him hold one of the new babies while her arms were full with the other. Sometimes she would reach out and ruffle his hair the way he thought a real mother would.

And after all that . . .

"I'm sorry," Sarah said, "about your attachment to the princess. Truly. We all wish there was a different way, but there isn't. Think of the twins."

Baron's fingers tightened on his sword. "The way you thought of them when you abandoned us all? When you declared us damned ? How does that reflect on you—the hidden Caster?" He scoffed, shaking his head. "Do you know how many times I wished someone understood me? Father tried. He did his best. Now I find that you were right there for years as I struggled with magic, as Corvin and Leon struggled with magic, and you never said a word."

She flinched. Slowly, she folded her arms in, cradling her elbows as if bracing herself. "I did not declare damnation as a curse against my family. I simply had my eyes opened, at last, to the horror of our reality."

"I don't know what reality you were seeing, because I always thought we were happy until you tore the cornerstone from the foundation."

Baron glanced toward the stairs, feeling his heart crack, one part pulling him toward the girl in danger, one part begging for an answer from the woman before him.

Clenching his jaw, Baron focused on Sarah. "Father was different after you left. Harder on the twins. Worse in his temper. He grieved you, and where before he'd always been optimistic about our place in the kingdom, he started to carry a shadow of your damnation. He feared he'd lose all of us the way he lost you."

Sarah opened her mouth, but Baron wasn't finished.

"Grieving—are you familiar? Six months ago, when Father died, you didn't come to the funeral. You didn't send word, didn't check on us at all. If you want any hope of me trusting you after that, you'll stand aside, and you'll let me get to Aria before I lose her too."

When Baron had hired an investigator to find Sarah, he'd told himself it was for the twins—the twins needed a parent, the twins needed support in their grief. That had only been half the reason.

Because Baron had needed her too.

They locked eyes, and he waited.

But Sarah did not move.