“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 neverwouldtell 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 sayswe’redamned. 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, perhapsI 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—youhavebeen 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.
