“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 amyth. 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 spentfour yearsapart. 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 beentimes—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.”
