Baron shot the boy a look that silenced him on the spot.
“Of course, Lady Bennett,” he said. “I take full responsibility. I’m truly sorry I can do nothing to restore the vase.”
Amid a buzz of whispers from the other guests, he ushered the twins to the waiting carriage, holding tense until they’d passed beyond the gate. Then he released a sigh.
“It was an accident, Baron,” Corvin whispered. The boy had pressed himself all the way to the far end of the carriage bench, his eyes on the floor.
“Accident or on purpose,” Leon muttered from the other end, “it wasus.She shouldn’t have screamed at you.”
Sitting across from them, Baron took a steadying breath, holding his tongue as every possibility passed over it.
Can’t you stop fighting?
What if one of you had transformed?
I already have so much—
“You’re not hurt?” he finally managed. When both twins shook their heads, he said, “Good.”
“We’re sorry.” Corvin shrank in his seat, the posture he always assumed before a lecture. Had Father been alive, he would have received one, at twice the volume of Lady Bennett’s. Worry always brought out the worst of Father’s temper.
But Baron wasn’t their father. He never could be.
“It’s been hard for all of us,” he said.
Both boys relaxed.
After a few moments of calming silence, Corvin muttered, “I bet Silas broke at least ten saucers growing up. She just never found the pieces.”
Even Leon smiled at that.
Aria returned to the palace with a smile on her face despite the late hour. She’d paid and dismissed her guards, and she tended to her own horse to avoid waking a stablehand. Then she snuck into the castle through the servants’ entrance in the kitchen.
Cook had dozed off on a bench. The woman spent far too many late nights and early mornings tending to Aria’s family and the frequent palace guests. Aria fetched a blanket from the linens closet beside the laundry room, then returned to tuck it around the woman’s shoulders. Cook shifted in her sleep, turning her head, but did not wake.
Aria continued creeping through hallways, holding tightly to a letter bearing Widow Morton’s seal that outlined the points of their discussion. The king’s seal would finalize the agreement. Simply holding it, Aria felt as if she held a cloud. She floated toward her room.
Though she convinced herself not to wake her father until morning—already imagining his pride, his deep voice saying,Well done, Aria—she couldn’t manage the same restraint with her sister. She ducked through the door between their adjoining bedchambers, tiptoeing up to Eliza’s four-poster bed, where the younger princess’s silhouette could be seen beneath the rise and fall of a thick comforter.
“Eliza!” Aria hissed. Playfully, she slapped the covers a few times. “Eliza, wake up, I’m back! I did it!”
But Eliza slept on. Aria frowned; her sister was not a deep sleeper. The girl insisted servants put thicker coverings on her windows because even a small amount of light disturbed her rest.
Aria lit a lamp.
Eliza slept on.
No matter how Aria shook her sister or shouted, she would not wake. Finally, in a rush of terror, Aria fled to her father’s bedchamber, Widow Morton’s letter falling from her hands.
“Father, something’s happened to Eliza!”
But the king would not wake either.
At last, Aria realized what she should have noticed immediately. No one had come running when she shouted. Not a single guard stood awake at post. Instead, they snoozed against doors, slumped like Cook on her bench.
The entire castle had fallen under a sleeping Cast.
With numb steps, Aria returned to the hallway and picked up the widow’s letter. She pried the seal free and read the interior, but it was only their peace agreement, every word exactly as she’d witnessed the widow inscribe it.
