Mireille was on the training yard wall. Four years old, copper-haired, one brown eye and one blue, and absolutely no fear of heights. She perched on the stone ledge with her legs dangling over a twelve-foot drop, eating an apple, watching her brothers with evaluative calm.
“Mama!” she called.
“Get down from the wall.”
“Papa said I could sit here.”
“Which papa?”
“The one who says yes to everything.”
Percy. Of course.
Solian sat cross-legged in the courtyard center with an actual book in his lap. He was four. He couldn’t read yet, not fully, but he studied the pages with silver eyes that tracked the text with the same intensity Solomon applied to intelligence reports.
Edgar the Third perched on his knee, and boy and bird maintained a companionable silence that would’ve been unsettling if it weren’t so profoundly Solomon.
“Hi, Mama.” He didn’t look up.
“Hi, baby. What are you reading?”
“Papa’s war book.”
“Which papa?”
“The one who doesn’t say yes to everything.”
Solomon. Obviously.
Percius was nowhere visible. This was standard. Percius operated on the principle that if you couldn’t see him, youcouldn’t stop him, and he applied this philosophy to everything from stealing kitchen scraps to attempting to ride Nox at full gallop through the Great Hall.
“Percy.” I found my mate in the courtyard archway, leaning against the stone with his arms crossed and a grin that told me he knew exactly where Percius was and had decided to let the chaos unfold. “Where is your son?”
“Which one?”
“The one who’s missing.”
“He’s not missing, don’t worry.”
A crash from inside the castle was followed by a shriek that was more excitement than distress and Nox bolting through the archway with Percius on his back. The boy’s fists tangled in the shadow hound’s mane, his face split by a grin so wide it showed every tooth.
“I’m riding!” Percius announced.
“You’re grounded,” I said.
“You can’t ground me. I’m a prince!”
“I’m the queen. I outrank you. Get off the hound.”
He dismounted with grudging acceptance. Nox immediately lay down and rested his massive head on Percius’s feet, tail wagging, an accomplice with zero remorse.
Solomon appeared from the study. Solian’s book, I now realized, was one Solomon had left on the lower shelf deliberately, testingwhether the boy would reach for it. He caught my eye across the courtyard and his mouth shifted by approximately two millimeters.
“Your son is reading your war correspondence,” I said.
“He’s reviewing historical records.”
“He’s a kid.”
