“It was intentional,” Casper finished for him, a feeling like ice flowing through his veins.
“It seems that way. Someone wants your fiancée dead.”
Chapter eleven
Norditch
Sienna
“Hold on a minute.” Sienna held up the hand of her free arm as she tried to digest the information Jem was laying before her. “You’re saying that you think the cliff might have been tampered with, and that what happened wasn’t an accident?”
Jem nodded. “It was just made to look like one.”
Sienna glanced over to Casper, seated to the side and looking on like an impartial judge. “What do you think?”
He leaned forward in his chair. “Is that really something that’s possible to do with magic?”
She tilted her head thoughtfully.
If he were a Dwarf or even part Gnome, he would know about the music of the rocks and earth. Maybe he comes from a Dryad family—but sailing would be an even stranger occupation for one of them—and he doesn’t have wings, which means a Pixie is out of the question.
“You don’t know?”
He shrugged and shot Jem an uncomfortable glance before admitting, “Magic isn’t really my forte.”
Ah, maybe he’s one of those poor souls born tone deaf, and he can’t hear the music. How horrible!
Her heart ached for him. Even as much as it physically pained her sometimes to be unable to access magic the way she once had, at least she could still hear the beauty of the music and lose herself in the soothing, rippling melodies of the water. It was out of reach, but not lost entirely.
Though I suppose that if he never heard it in the first place, he doesn’t realize what he’s missing.
“With the right song, it is. Dwarves and Gnomes and any other fae who have Natural magic attuned to rocks and minerals would have no problem manipulating its shape.”
“Are there any around here?”
“There are a few families in town. Grant Minuendo is the blacksmith, and his brother Breck works as a stonemason. But before you start getting ideas, neither of them would ever dream of doing anything like this.”
Jem drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “What about elves?”
Sienna sat up straighter. “Elves?”
“Their magic is different, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she answered slowly. “Their Creative magic allows them to do almost anything, but only if they know the right song. I’m not sure how many elves are walking around with a song to splitrocks in their repertoire. Besides, the only elf family around here is Erik’s.”
Casper and Jem shared a significant look.
“Wait!” she gasped. “You thinkErikwanted to kill me?”
Jem shrugged. “It would be a rather convenient way to get the lighthouse.”
“Ha. It would be anything but, and he has to know that. If I died and there was even thehintof foul play, Celesta and Drosselmeyer would stop at nothing until they found out the truth.” A sudden thought struck her. “Wait! Maybe this has something to do with the crates. Papa certainly seemed spooked by something.”
“What crates?” Casper’s eyes were bright with an interest she had never seen before, and she was distracted for a moment by how they lit up his face.
She blinked, breaking the sky blue spell. “I was walking along the beach the day before yesterday and decided to go exploring in some caves I know of nearby. One of them was piled high with crates, all stamped with the label ‘Hollander’s Emporium.’”
Casper and Jem shared a long look, communicating something across the distance between them.
