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I met his gaze with a grateful nod. I might not have been a talker like Callon, but that didn’t mean I didn’t appreciate him being there with me. “You’re a good friend, Cal.”
He flashed me a toothy smile. “I know.” With a wink, Callon turned for the door. “You know,” he started and gripped the doorway. “Just because you can’t be in the castle doesn’t mean you can’tbe there.”
The furrow in my brow deepened, but only because I hadn’t thought of it myself. With sudden purpose, I sat up straighter.
Callon’s grin widened, and he tapped the side of his head. “It comes in handy once in a while.” And with that, he left me unattended with my thoughts.
Callon was right. I didn’t have to be in the castle walls to know what was happening.
Walking over to my cot, I laid back, the frame creaking under my weight. Two weeks ago, I woke up in my dust-layered quarters in the desert, but it already felt like a lifetime ago.
Rubbing the exhaustion from my face, I crossed my ankles and closed my eyes. Exhaling a heavy breath, I searched for a soaring mind to nudge my way into.
I’d never understood exactly how my Ability worked, only that the fainter the tingle of an animal’s mind, the farther away it was. So, reaching my cerebral fingers toward the castle, I searched for willing vessels, jumping from the animal minds in the lower estates toward the garden.
With no one I cared to see in sight, I continued mind-hopping until, finally, I found a murder of crows in the castle courtyard and settled into one.
My mind sharpened to focus. I was perched at the top of a eucalyptus tree, the centerpiece of a cobblestone mosaic rising from the middle of the compound. The walls of the ramparts surrounding me gleamed in the daylight, and muttering filled my ears as I tried to concentrate amid the onslaught of heightened sounds and senses.
Del stood at the mouth of the drawbridge, Garath standing sentry at her side. A line of her subjects stretched before her, but I couldn’t look away from Del.
No longer dressed in her shirt and trousers, Del was a vision of black and looked every bit the part of a grieving queen regent. Her onyx, high-collar robe flared over the bruising on her neck and cascaded down, covering an understated, silver-embossed gown that matched her royal pendant. For all of her youthful rebellion, Del had the stature and grace of a queen as she greeted her subjects one by one.
She was the epitome of cool confidence. A reassuring vision with her shoulders back, her expression soft yet composed as she took a man’s weathered hands in hers, uttering reassurances about the future of the Corvo Kingdom in the wake of her mother’s death.
You would never know she’d been victimized last night or that we’d staged the death of her piece of shit husband, who had obviously tormented her over the years. Then again, I doubted Del saw herself as a victim. Watching her as she was now, the incoming queen, I realized the only person she might truly have needed saving from was herself. For all of her sacrifices, Del was a mother, a determined one, who would battleanyfoe to keep Liam safe and suffer any consequence in the wake of that determination. But at what cost to herself?
Hearing a child’s voice on the terrace, I pivoted on my perch and peered over at Liam, reading a book on a castle balcony facing the courtyard, a raven friend of his own hopping along the stone beside him. Ada sat nearby, mending something with thread and needle in the shade of the honeysuckle vines.
But the rest of the world fell away as I stared at the boy. Liam. My son.
He looked older in the light of day, with bright, shrewd eyes, a roman nose, and a calm demeanor I hadn’t expected. “When will Mother be finished?” he asked, gazing down at Del by the gate.
“Soon,” Ada promised, peering at him over her needlework. “Be patient, young prince.”
“Can we at least visit the gardens?”
“Your mother wants us to stay close, so we will wait until her duties are finished.” Ada winked at him. “Only a little while longer,” she added more softly, and though Liam huffed a sigh, he didn’t complain again.
His raven friend waddled closer on the railing, picking at his sleeve playfully. Liam’s lightly bronzed cheek rounded with a grin. He had his mother’s nose, but as his eyes twinkled in the sunlight, I felt it—his mind. It tingled as he peered up at me. Not at the other crows perched on the surrounding branches, but right atme.
My heart lodged in my throat, and I held my breath. His mind was pulsing and probing, and I dared to fly closer to him.
As we assessed one another, I landed on a eucalyptus branch outstretched in his direction. The more I stared at him, the more I wondered how I hadn’t seen the similarity between us the few times I’d seen images of him before.
Assuming Liam knew nothing about me, I wasn’t sure what to do, so I waited, letting him make the next move.
“You’re different,” he said quietly, and crossing his arms on the terrace, he leaned forward, his head quirked to the side. “You don’t feel like Garath feels in my mind.”
I tilted my head to mirror his, making him smile, and I melted a little more inside.
“What are you?” he silently asked me.
I swallowed thickly.“A friend.”It was all I could think to communicate.
“Your mind feels funny.”He scrunched his nose, the most adorable thing I’d ever seen, and my chest cinched.
“I don’t know, but this stinks of Maylar, just as Del said.” My mind stirred at the words, breaking the bond between Liam and me, and I peered down into the courtyard. The older woman from last night had pulled Garath aside as Del continued consoling her subjects.
