“Excuse me, Emily, was it?” Jack put on his most charming smile. “Could you point me to the closest bathroom? It was a long car ride down here.”

“Of course, of course.” Emily waved one of the ubiquitous servants following behind them toward Jack and told her to show him the way.

Jack sauntered away, flirting wildly with the servants who trailed him. It would only be a matter of time before Jack had them all so turned around that none of them realized he no longer had an escort.

Marshall allowed himself a tiny smile at his friend’s antics before he set up a link between their three minds. It was important when separating to stay connected, so they could share their findings with one another and weigh in with observations. It was especially helpful now, considering how agitated Adelle was. It was always good to give her room to vent privately before she said something out loud they would all regret later.

Their procession continued through the lavishly decorated mansion, and Emily continued with a litany of excuses and apologies punctuated with increasingly erratic and alarming hand motions. By the time they made it to the infirmary, Marshall was ready to put Emily to sleep himself just to keep from losing an eye.

Once they arrived, Marshall took a look around. He had been expecting a small room, but the infirmary took up an entire hall of the vast estate.

Entering the room, the first thing he saw was the dazzling array of colors bathing the room. The wall-to-wall windows were lined with an endless number of shelves, each filled with crystalline cases of every color imaginable. The overall effect was breathtaking even to Marshall’s eyes, though he doubted aesthetics were the first or even third reason for their existence in the room.

In a witch’s infirmary, crystal cases were a necessity. Many counter-curses and magical remedies had a long casting-time, so having such things already on hand was imperative. But for witch magic, once a spell was attached to an item, unless dreamcrafted, it became a charm that began to deteriorate immediately. Witches compensated for this by placing pre-spelled items in crystal cases. The crystal refracted the magic and kept it fresh. Each spell-type resonated differently, so a different crystal was necessary for each kind of magic. If the wrong spell went into the wrong case, the effects could be catastrophic.

Emily led them to a bed occupied by the woman from the cemetery scene. Marshall had only met Stella Blaike once, but it had been memorable enough.

As the son of a praetor, Marshall had been introduced to all the powerful family members of the Other and was familiar with the drama and politics such meetings incurred. When he’d met Stella several years ago, she had made him feel like an embarrassed teenager even though he was nearly a century her senior.

From the moment they had been introduced, Stella couldn’t seem to keep her hands to herself. Their society frowned on casual touching among all but the closest of companions, but Stella had kept touching Marshall’s hair, adjusting his clothing, or grabbing his hand and attempting to drag him somewhere to meet someone.

Marshall had been forced to shield as hard as he could just to keep from spilling into her mind. At the time he had thought it was because she was a massive flirt, since it wasn’t unusual for him to receive excessive attention from social climbers.

Marshall had been known to get multiple propositions during such an event, ranging anywhere from mostly innocent to wildly outlandish. When he was a teen it had turned his head, but his father and Adelle managed to keep him from becoming a preening idiot with well-aimed lessons in humility.

So instead of being a pompous asshole, Marshall was well-known for being reserved. If Stella knew of his reputation, it was possible she had been doing it to force him to shield so he wouldn’t notice something she wanted to keep hidden.

The woman in the bed before him looked more disheveled, but no less beautiful, than when he had last seen her. The fight had clearly taken a lot out of Stella—her blood-orange magic was little more than a spark inside her chest. Her head was covered by a spelled bandage, which Marshall could sense was healing and regrowing hair—a tricky combination. The healer for the Blaike family had to be a high-level charm-crafter, or the bandage would have simply disintegrated from holding such potent magic.

He could also see other bandages peeking out from the plush, red-velvet robe Stella had draped around her body. Damaged as she was, Stella still managed to look royal.

:There is no sign of demon taint on Stella,: Marshall informed Jack through the link. Adelle could hear him too, but she could see it clearly for herself.

It took no effort for a decent dreamwalker to see demon taint. Their wrongness was so clear you’d have to be incredibly distracted to miss even a trace amount of it. It had been overkill to send Jack after the officers Marshall had seen on the stairwell, but he liked to be thorough in such cases.

“Marshall, darling. So good to see you. I must apologize for not coming to greet you at the door. I must look dreadful.” Stella scrunched her immaculately made-up face into a pout.

Adelle snorted loudly behind him.

Ignoring his sister, he said, “That isn’t possible, Stella.” He threw a warning poke with his mind at Adelle. “I appreciate you meeting with us under the circumstances. With your cooperation, we can clear this up quickly, and you can get back to your rest.”

Stella’s soft brown eyes looked up at him, the picture of innocence. “Clear what up, Marshall?” She patted a spot on the bed beside him, her posture a clear invitation. “Sit down, dear, you’re making my neck hurt looking all the way up there. We don’t really need Big Sis here, do we?”

Not wanting to become her personal teddy bear again, Marshall lowered himself into the chair next to her bed instead. “We know what happened in the cemetery, Stella, and we came here to hear your side of the story.”

Behind him, Adelle huffed in irritation. :You could have strung it out a bit more than that, brother. She might have revealed something if we let her pretend long enough.:

:If I wait too long, she’ll begin planning our wedding.: Marshall explained, and then gently, but firmly, pushed his sister to the back of his mind.

“That was a family matter.” Stella’s eyes tightened slightly at the edges, but she kept her voice light. “Hardly something worth troubling the guardians over, especially Team Fire. I’m sure you all have something more important to do than to get involved in a domestic dispute.”

“When we have to clean up after your domestic dispute, it becomes our problem,” Adelle spat, and then began stalking back and forth in front of the bed like a tigress. “Did you even check to see how many people you killed this morning?”

Stella looked wounded. “Of course I did! My representative is with the victims and their families right now making sure their every need is attended to. We’ve spared no expense to see to their comfort, poor things. It was a terrible tragedy.”

“Yes, it was. So why did it happen? Why did your family attack that boy? Who is he?”

“I guess you’ve found us out, so there is no point in trying to hide it anymore.”

:Wait for it…: Adelle’s sarcasm was ill-concealed.

Stella sighed and smiled sadly. “Sterling isn’t our matriarch’s only child, as we’d led everyone to believe. She also had another son, but we don’t talk about him. It hurts too much.” Stella allowed herself a delicate sniff before continuing. “Poor little Cymbeline, my sunshine boy. He was the prize of the family when he was a little boy, and I’m afraid we spoiled him terribly.

“He was such a charming child and so very beautiful. When he came into his magic, it was a blow to the whole family. It was wild and completely uncontrollable, and I’m sad to say it drove him mad, but we loved him. So, instead of sending him away or having him destroyed, we kept him safe here on the compound.”

Marshall was stunned into silence. Uncontrollable magic was rare and almost unheard of among the Other. In his one hundred and thirty-seven years of life, he’d heard of only one instance of a child being born with an uncontrollable gift. The poor creature hadn’t lasted long enough to be put down or locked away. Instead, the magic burned him until he was consumed.

Marshall understood now why he’d never heard of the boy. In magical society, the custom was to keep children close to the clan until their magic presented itself. If Cymbeline had been gifted with uncontrollable magic, his family had the option of taking responsibility for the matter.

Marshall didn’t like the custom, but it was legal, if archaic.

Adelle’s fury was burning at the edges of his mind, and Marshall knew he’d have to talk fast before she let it free to find its target.

He wasn’t worried as much about Adelle as he was about himself right then. The problem was going to be not letting his own temper get the better of him either.

The image of a different child, scared and helpless, flitted through his mind. For a brief moment, his vision edged with red. He leaned on his training and searched for a focal point to bring him into the present. He rubbed his hand against the side of his pants to feel the rough material against his skin to remind him where and when he was, but sad blue eyes kept bringing him into the past.

Marshall’s power, blue and brilliant, began to build inside him, looking for an outlet to focus its attention.

Right now, his power was so close to the surface that if he thought about an action or desire, it would act on it. If he didn’t get control soon this was going to go badly. Possibly worse than it had with Callum, and the Blaike family wasn’t likely to let a lapse of control go unanswered.

:I’m here, man. What do you need?: Jack’s star-flecked rainbow essence wrapped around Marshall, giving him the stability he needed to regain control.

His power sank back down grudgingly, willing to go back to sleep for the time being. :That was enough, thank you.: Now he was back in guardian mode and could make rational decisions again.

Unaware of how close she’d come to destruction, Stella continued her story. “Everything was fine for many years. We kept him from hurting anyone and provided him with every comfort imaginable. I assure you we did our duty to the Guard. No rules were broken.” Her last words came out in a rush.

:It sounds like she’s more worried about what we think about them keeping the boy alive, than what we think about them locking him up.: Adelle’s disgust was unmistakable.

:Careful, Addy,: Jack admonished, like he was worried Marshal would go nuclear if Adelle didn’t tread carefully.

His warning was unnecessary. With Jack’s calming influence, Marshall was firmly in control again and determined to see what could be done to fix this mess.

“So what happened?” Marshall’s voice was casual. If Stella thought he was on her side, he’d get further.

“The ungrateful brat just vanished on us! There was no warning, no reason as far as we could tell. One day his servant told us he wasn’t in his room anymore. Everyone on the estate has been on high alert for over a month. We’ve done everything we can to get him back, but you can see”—she patted her bandaged head gingerly—“he’s completely out of control. The last thing we wanted was to inconvenience the Guard, and we tried to fix this without you, but now that you are here, I have to admit we really could use your help.”

If Stella was hiding something, it was a smart ploy to act like their help was welcome rather than a hindrance. Guard law stated that no guardian could be denied entry to a clan’s estate, and all possible aid must be rendered. If any guardian felt like they were being blocked in carrying out their duty, they had free license to remove the obstacle in any manner they saw fit.