Elizawas why the widow had surrendered an Artifact. Once Eliza also suffered exhaustion, the king would have quickly realized the existence of a curse, regardless of Aria’s forced silence on the matter. He would have taken bold action against Northglen. So Widow Morton had arranged proof of curse but also given him something to occupy his time. He thought, as most people did, that breaking an Artifact ended things. But the king did not even have the right Artifact.
And Morton only had to keep him occupied one month before it was too late.
If this was a siege, Aria couldn’t help feeling the castle had already fallen.
Having been directly confronted by the princess, Huxley had yet to regain his blustering confidence. Instead, he slunk around the manor, giving more suggestions than orders, making no comment when Corvin disappeared for long stretches. At times, Baron caught the man squinting at him, as if trying to reason through exactly how a Caster had won the favor of a princess.
Baron wasn’t certain himself, but he found Aria was all he could think about. He remembered the panic on her face as she crashed through the kitchen door, remembered it melting into relief as he held her, and even as he logically knew the relief came fromnot falling, the most fanciful part of himself held it as something else. Relief at being in his arms. For a moment after the joust—after she’d savedhim, repaying the kitchen and then some—he’d thought perhaps she’d glanced at his lips, held his gaze with longing.
She sent a new letter the night of the joust, and Baron woke at dawn to receive her falcon because he heard it the instant it tapped at the window. Sometimes he heard that tapping in his dreams.
It was the shortest letter she’d ever sent, speaking about nothing in particular, and at the end, her valediction both lifted and pierced his heart.
I miss you,
Aria
In his mind, Baron returned to the palace hallway, sitting beside her, feeling the softness of her fingers wrapped in his. Hearing something in her blood roar. It began to live in his memory beside the image of his father thrashing in bed. The last time he’d needed his Casting to save someone, he’d failed.
Was he going to fail again?
“Do youhaveto practice in my kitchen?” Leon whined.
Baron ignored him, waiting for the pot above the flames to boil.
“Go to the lake or something. Stop hogging my fireplace.”
“I need moving water,” said Baron. One of the difficulties in working with blood was the constantly changing nature of it, the combined tangle of motion and life not present in any other liquid. The living aspect he couldn’t replicate, but movement he could. He had to begin somewhere.
“Then find a nice river!”
“Oh, we have one lurking in the house I was unaware of?”
Leon hissed, then turned to quiet grumbling, apparently remembering Baron’s traveling restrictions.
The water began to tremble and shake, bubbles rising with the haste of drowning sailors to reach the surface. Baron dipped his fingers in. The water couldn’t burn him—though the pot could if he brushed it by accident—but neither did it calm at his touch. He closed his eyes and breathed. The song of the water was not a smooth melody but an agitated staccato of notes, hard to grasp, harder to predict, but he caught it at last.
He opened his eyes to a pot holding a soft golden glow, smooth as a waiting canvas.
“Congratulations,” said Leon. “Now make it boil again because I need it. And it better not taste like your fingers.”
Unfortunately, it was not nearly as easy to strain out a curse as it was to filter a temperature.
“Do you ever practice your Artifacts?” Baron asked absently, heating the water as requested.
Leon’s staregave the impression of a cat flattening its ears. “What’s the point of making little night-vision trinkets? Who’s gonna use them? Waste of cooking time. If you’re looking for help with some other weird training exercise, bird-boy is the one you want.”
Artifacts worked quite differently for Affiliates than for Casters. PerhapsArtifactwasn’t even the proper term. Without the ability to practice openly and confer with others sharing their talents, the boys had discovered the possibilities of their magic through accident more than anything. Corvin had been the one to discover they could imbue certain objects with attributes from their Affiliated animal. He was still hoping he could create an Artifact that gave the power of flight. Baron hoped he didn’t accomplish it, because Corvin would undoubtedly use it to launch Leon into the sky to see if he landed on his feet.
“I was only curious.” Baron stepped away from the fire. “The persistence of a cat would benefit me at the moment.”
“I’ve seen you swing a sword for hours without even fighting a real person; you’ve got persistence enough. All a cat-ribute would give you is the overwhelming urge to nap in a puddle of sunlight.”
He made a good point. After pulling his gloves back on, Baron headed for the training yard.
Baron’s ears rang with the echo of every connection betweenhis practice blade and the dummy’s battered armor. At least temporarily, the rigorous activity banished his fears.
Something darted through the grass. Baron spun on instinct, already swinging. The long, gray snake dodged his wooden sword point with unnatural swiftness, and in the next moment, the adder vanished in a swirling column of gray mist, transforming into his best friend. Silas stood with vest unbuttoned and hands in his pockets, smirking as if he’d never left. As if it hadn’t beentwo years.
