“It’s fascinating.” Aria sighed. “But I’m afraid it doesn’t help me stop Widow Morton. Unless you’re willing to turnherinto a crow for me.”
“Oh, I’d do it! I’d peck her eyes out. But it wouldn’t stop anything she’d already Cast. I’m sorry.”
Aria smiled anyway. She caught Baron’s gaze and nodded toward the door. But then Leon spoke up. The boy stood against the wall with his arms crossed over his brown apron. He kept his eyes on the other side of the kitchen.
“It’s not what you don’t know about magic,” he said quietly. “It’s what you don’t know about Charlie.”
Corvin frowned. “Since when did you know Charlie Morton?”
“Since Baron’s eighteenth birthday party when Dad got too excited about his grown-up firstborn and invited half the court to overrun the house. I wasn’t even allowed in the kitchen. Dad thought I’d get too worked up and transform in front of everybody.”
Baron clenched his jaw. His father’s worry over his two youngest sons had often kept them prisoners in their own house.
Then again, Baron had let Corvin fly to the palace, and he’d been discovered. If it had been anyone but Aria, it would have been a fatal mistake. He wondered what his father would think of him now, when he’d managed to fail every duty entrusted to him, from care of his title to care of his brothers.
Then he thought of Aria’s words.I can say with certainty that Lord Guillaume exemplifies every attribute of his father.
Dared he imagine his father would feel the same? That he’d be proud of Baron’s efforts even considering the results?
“I know birdbrain flew away when Dad wasn’t looking,” Leonwent on, “but I couldn’t. Then Charlie Morton came sneaking into my room. He’d been prowling all over the house, even lifted something from Dad’s study. Sticky hands. He couldn’t resist sneaking anywhere, he said.”
“It’s what got him killed,” Aria whispered.
“That’s not what got him killed.” Leon’s expression hardened. “Not really.”
“Leon, what are you saying?” Though Baron had a sinking feeling he already knew.
“I promised him I’d never tell anyone, not even beak-face, and I don’t know if it will even help to tell. It’s not like it will bring him back.” Leon glanced at Aria, a deep pain in his brown eyes. “But you didn’t turn Corvin in when he was an idiot, so ... if there’s any chance it does help, I’ll tell you. Charlie was a cat like me.”
Aria returned to the party in a daze. Her practiced etiquette allowed her to hold conversations, to smile, to dance.
Even as her heart was breaking.
The deadly spy in her father’s private council was only a lost boy, unrestrained in his own curiosity. Having seen Corvin transform, she could picture a cornered gray cat, a burst of mist, then a trembling boy with hands desperately extended, trying to explain. Met with a sword.
Her father had killed Charlie, and it wasn’t about protecting the kingdom. It was from a misguided fear of magic. Perhaps he’d thought it a mercy to conceal Charlie’s nature as a shapeshifter, so that members of court wouldn’t look at Clarissa Morton with additional fear. As if anything could be a mercy after slaughtering her son.
Or perhaps he couldn’t face the truth. One shapeshifter per century—that was the belief. If her father admitted Charlie’s nature, he would have to admit the understanding of shapeshifters was flawed, and if it was flawed in one regard, it could be flawed in all. A landslide of uncertainty. Aria knew well the feeling of being trapped beneath that.
When she’d gone to Northglen to negotiate peace, she hadn’t even known the woman she was facing, had no understanding of her son or her daughter, of the depths of her power and hergrief, of the things she fought to defend with the desperation of a woman who’d lost everything else.
Aria had been a fool, and the marks in her mind tallied without an end to the condemnation. After gettingeverythingso very wrong, did she even deserve another chance?
“Your Highness.”
Something about the tone pulled her back to the moment. She stood in the entry room, nodding at the departing guests. Just beyond her, Baron stood at the door with Corvin and Huxley, thanking guests, shaking hands. Far more people conversed with Baron than with Huxley, even as the man tried to draw attention.
Earl Wycliff had lingered beside Aria.
“Forgive me, Lord Wycliff. I was distracted.”
The man nodded graciously. His graying hair usually gave him a distinguished look, but now, he seemed only aging, tired. Though he stood upright, his face sagged with sorrow.
Looking at him, Aria’s heart took another blow.
“I’m sorry about Henry,” she whispered.
Perhaps he’d come to accuse her. To demand an explanation of how she could smile and dance while his son was on a ship to Pravusat, never to see his family again.
