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I snorted. “I mean, I seem to remember Regan throwing a lot of sand at me when we were their age.”

“Yes, well, you gave as well as you got,” my mother said placidly.

“Did I?” I tried to remember.

My mother shot me a look of amusement. “You don’t remember pushing Regan’s head under the water and making her scream?”

I laughed. “Me? Come now, I’d never be such a brute.”

My mother shook her head. Her expression turned soft, and she raised a hand to touch my cheek. “You are my gentle boy. My sweet Blake. But there is a roughness in you, too. You have your father’s strength, make no mistake. When you were younger, I had to teach you how to curb it.”

I looked down at her. It was still hard to believe that over the last two summers I’d shot up and now surpassed her in height. She’d always seemed larger than life, an unchanging presence, calm and steadfast. Now I saw the worry in her eyes. I felt a pang of guilt. “You look tired.”

She brushed off my concern. “I’m fine. I’ve been sleeping better here than I have in months.”

Persis was screaming bloody murder again. We watched Aenia laugh loudly. Then she went over to him and seemed to apologize for whatever she’d done. They ran off together again. I exhaled in relief. Sometimes my little sister could be a little lacking in empathy. It was one thing to show proper highblood competitiveness and another to be constantly cruel, especially to a fellow noble child.

“She’s all right,” my mother reassured me. “They’re little. They’re still learning to care about other people. It’s normal, Blake. I promise you. You and Regan were the same way.” She squeezed my arm. “Remember when her pet died that summer? She was so brokenhearted.”

“Brokenhearted? Regan?” I scoffed. “Are we talking about the same girl? I seem to remember she forgot to feed it. You know, that’s why it died.”

“Oh, Blake! She cried for a week. Did she forget to feed it? Well, she’d never had a pet before. Her father had never allowed her one.”

“Yes, and then you said they should let her keep a kitten. She kept it in her closet and forgot about it.” Had Regan been sorry? I tried to remember the look of horror on her face and failed. But then, she was a highblood. We tended to hide our mistakes when they happened.

My mother’s face turned pale, and I regretted my words. “Oh, the poor girl.”

I snorted again. “You’ve always been too soft on her. I’ve never understood why.”

My mother’s eyes suddenly blazed. “When something like that happens, Blake, it says more about the parents than the child, I assure you.” Her face fell abruptly.

I knew what she was thinking about: Marcus. I glanced ahead at Aenia. “I’m sorry, Mother.”

She bit her lip. “Someday, you may have children of your own, and you’ll understand …” Then she trailed off, remembering.

Ahead of us, Persis shrieked again. “I’m telling!” the boy cried this time. Then he scampered off up the sandy cliffs and back to the house. I watched Aenia kick at the sand with a scowl on her face. Then she gave a shrug and began to play in the water by herself.

“Oh, I hope he doesn’t go to his father,” my mother murmured.

Lyle Pansera didn’t like Aenia. None of the Panseras really did, besides Persis—when Aenia wasn’t throwing sand in his face, of course.

“Marcus fucks up plenty. But I have, too,” I said shortly. I couldn’t get my mind off the look I’d seen in my mother’s eyes. “I made your life harder.”

“It’s my job,” she said shortly. “I’m your mother. It’s my job to protect you. To protect all of you.”

“You already had your work cut out for you with Marcus,” I muttered, kicking at a rock.

I didn’t have to look at her to picture her weary expression. “Yes, well, Marcus …”

My older brother was a lost cause. I knew this. But I knew my mother still carried some hope in her heart for him—even when he’d been the cause of Aenia’s plight. The reason she’d first been orphaned.

It had been five years now. Aenia was less than two when I’d found her. Marcus brought me out with his friends for the first time that night. They’d taken me out to a tavern where they’d made me drink too much and where they’d made a nuisance of themselves. I’d puked in an alley and wanted to go home, but Marcus made me stay. They’d gone to another tavern, gotten more drunk, and then spilled out into the street, noisy and drunk and wild. They’d been so wild they’d scared me.

It had been a simple coincidence that brought them to Aenia’s door. Her mother had gone out to fetch some medicine for Aenia’s older brother. At least, that’s what I’d guessed had happened, when I was putting the pieces together, afterward. There’d been a bottle of cough medicine in her mother’s hand still when …

Marcus and his friend had liked the look of Aenia’s mother: She was a pretty blightborn woman. Maybe she’d made the mistake of smiling back at them, but it didn’t really matter. No matter what she’d done, she hadn’t deserved what happened to her.

They’d followed her home. They’d stayed.