As Tybalt closed his eyes and focused on the past, he was unsurprised to find that his earliest memories were of his mother, Viola.

  His mother, a roaring fire, and far too little food. They slept in the same bed in their little wooden hut, except on the rare occasion that the Baron came to visit. Then Tybalt slept under the stars.

  He liked those nights the best, because on those nights, he knew he had a father.

  Tybalt recognized his own green eyes and dark hair in the Baron’s countenance, so that even if the Baron and Tybalt’s mother had not told him, he would have figured out who his father was.

  But the Baron did not try to hide it. He would talk to Tybalt in a paternal way, telling him war stories or bits and pieces about magic—the Baron was a mage—or challenges of being a lord and making decisions about other people’s lives.

  Tybalt didn’t realize it until later, looking back on that time, but they ate better on the nights the Baron visited too.

  After the Baron stopped making his occasional visits when the boy was seven, the nights grew colder. And hungrier.

  That was also when his mother began beating him. She would grab a wooden spoon or break a thin branch off from a tree and tan his hide until her arm tired or the branch broke. Sometimes for forgetting to do a chore or doing it wrong. Sometimes for what seemed to be nothing at all.

  Once, when she was drunk and angry, she said that she was beating him because he looked like his father, and she did not want him to grow up like the Baron—to make bastards and then abandon them. She said that the Baron could have taken her as a second consort, but his lady wife was too proud to share him, and that was why they had to live like this. Tybalt found himself comforting her as she broke down crying.

  After that night, Tybalt never saw her drunk again.

  Two years passed, and the only male presence in Tybalt’s life was his mother’s younger brother, Sebastian.

  The three of them worked the family’s little plot of land, and they eked out a bare living from the low quality soil.

  Tybalt liked that life well enough at the time. He did not know enough to want more. Even as his cheeks grew hollow, and his stomach growled for lack of sufficient food, he was happy digging and planting in the soil. His mother did not beat him so much after she stopped drinking.

  Most of the time, he knew she loved him.

  But Viola, seeing her son growing thin and weak without his father’s affection and sustenance, grew impatient with the Baron’s lack of involvement. She had always been a strong-willed woman. Sebastian said that in their distant ancestry, there were mages and lords, from which station they had fallen due to bad luck in passing down the magical blood.

  That was where Viola got her strong will, according to Sebastian’s family lore—and perhaps it was also what had drawn the Baron’s eye. Viola never spoke much about either their family history or her relationship with the Baron—especially after she weaned herself off of drink.

  Whatever the cause of her discontent, it led to one of Tybalt’s most memorable conversations with his mother—and his lasting impression of her. Before then, most of his memories of her were of her warmth—or of her sudden and unexpected violence—but mainly her steady warmth.

  But after this, he remembered her firmness—her resolve.

  “Go to the Baron,” she told Tybalt. “You are his son—his only son. Though his wife bore him a daughter a little while before I had you, she has never had a successful pregnancy since that one.” She sounded slightly smug as she spoke, as if she was in some way looking down on the Baroness.

  “If you say so, Mama,” little Tybalt said, trying to contain his excitement at seeing his father again. “I’ll just go change into my best clothes, and—”

  “No,” she replied. “Go the way you are now.”

  Tybalt looked down at himself—at his dirty clothing with its holes and tears—and frowned.

  His mother continued speaking, “If you change your clothing, you’re lying to him—pretending that we’re doing better than we are. We don’t want him to think that. To the whole rest of the world, we’re proud. We don’t ever want them to see us weak or helpless, or they’ll try to take advantage. But the Baron is your father. He owes you something more than the seed that made you. He needs to see that you need him now.”

  Little Tybalt simply nodded. His Mama knew best.

  Viola gave him some words to speak to the Baron, and then he left for his father’s house. He walked on his own and tried to build up his courage to say the things he was supposed to say.

  Looking back, Tybalt remembered less of the words that he had been told to speak and more how he felt. His brain swam with a heady mixture of excitement and anxiety. Would his father be happy to see him? Or mad? What about his wife? And the daughter?

  He climbed the hill that separated the loose village of Greentear from the Baron’s manor, and the great edifice came into view, a building that dominated the immediate landscape by its sheer size. It was surrounded by solid stone walls, and from the top of the hill, Tybalt could see the greenery of a garden that grew lush and vibrant inside that enclosure.

  As Tybalt rushed down the hill, eager to see his father and meet the other side of his family, a chill breeze ran through the air. It was near the end of summer, and breezes of that kind were becoming more common.

  The wind swept through the tears and holes in his clothing, and as he clutched his body against the cold, a young girl stepped around the outside of the wall, looking from side to side. Her eyes widened as she saw him.

  Their gazes met, and for a long moment, they held each other’s eyes.

  Tybalt never knew what Miranda thought of him when they met, but for the nine-year-old boy, setting eyes on that girl, he felt a sensation like love at first sight.

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  Her long, dark curls looked soft and elegant, and her deep brown eyes were endless wells into which he longed to fall—or so he would write on spare scraps of paper over the next two years, as he struggled to learn poetry. The embarrassing literary efforts invariably ended up tossed into a fire.

  The girl approached him, took his hand, and began to lead him toward the gate of the manor.

  “You’re cold, aren’t you?” she said. She didn’t smile, not exactly, but her face looked concerned. Her eyes seemed wiser than her years.

  Up close, he realized that they were almost the same height—actually, she was an inch taller than him; she must have been a year or so older—so he tried to walk in a semi-tiptoe stance to seem taller.

  He realized after a moment of following meekly beside the girl that he hadn’t answered her question. His face colored.

  “I am cold,” he said. “Thank you for asking. My name is Tybalt.”

  She looked back at him and gave him the faintest sliver of a smile. “I’m Miranda.”

  And he followed this magical vision of a girl into the garden.

  “Miranda, what are you doing with that boy?” A shrill voice cut through the cool air, and both Tybalt and Miranda jumped. The boy clutched the girl’s hand more tightly and moved as if to pull her behind him. In case someone was there to give her a beating—the voice sounded angry—he was ready to defend her. Or at least give her a second or two to run away.

  A woman stepped out from within a hedge maze.

  Tybalt knew in an instant, from the woman’s similar but harsher looks—this was Miranda’s mother. His grip on the girl’s hand instantly relaxed. If she was this angel’s mother, this lady couldn’t be that bad.

  The woman stepped in and snatched Miranda’s other hand, pulling her behind the mother’s skirts. Tybalt had a chance to notice that the woman and the girl wore matching emerald-colored silk dresses and to see Miranda’s eyes turn sad before the girl was yanked out of view.

  “What are you doing here, urchin?” the woman demanded.

  Tybalt didn’t know what the word “urchin” meant, but his mind was scarcely on the woman’s words. He was wondering who she was—and by extension, who her daughter was.

  Did this woman work for the Baron? Or, was it possible—was that beautiful girl actually Tybalt’s half-sister?

  He knew little about the ways of the world at that age, but he knew just enough to recognize that the half-sister thing, if accurate, might mean he would not be able to marry the girl. It was a disappointing thought.

  “I’m, um, here to see the Baron, ma’am,” Tybalt said nervously.

  “Why?” she demanded. The tone conveyed the subtext, How dare you?!

  “I am his son,” Tybalt replied, a slight edge of defensiveness in his voice.

  The woman’s eyes narrowed.

  “Stay right here,” she ordered, pointing at the ground on which Tybalt stood.

  He nodded obediently

  And she marched inside the manor, Miranda trailing behind her. The girl gave him a little wave good-bye, which he returned. He imagined he might never see her again.

  That was his life. Few social connections. There were not many children in the village, because a plague had swept through around the time he was three years old.

  Almost all of the children who populated the area were either plague survivors several years older than Tybalt and Miranda, or they were younger than him and had missed the plague entirely. The older children still bore pock marks from their infections, but somehow, the disease had missed Tybalt and Miranda. Their clear skin would have marked them both out as different even if they had not been half-siblings.

  The next several minutes were spent in silence.

  Then the Baron himself, looking more harried than Tybalt had ever seen him.

  He tried to offer the boy a smile, but it looked false even to the nine-year-old’s eyes.

  “I see you met my lady,” the Baron said.

  Tybalt nodded. “Sorry.” He wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for, but it felt appropriate.

  “It happens,” the Baron replied. “She already knew about—about your mother and me.” He raised his voice and turned his head slightly, as if trying to be heard within the mansion. “She knows what is expected of a woman in her position and what is permitted to a man in mine.” Tybalt was confused. Then his father lowered his voice and turned to face him full-on again. “What is it you came over for, son?”

  “Uh—” The words had fled his mind. Whatever his mother had sent him to say, he would only butcher it now. He thought of the girl again. “I came, because I want to be treated as your son,” Tybalt said finally. “I mean, I want to be here, and—”

  But his father was shaking his head violently.

  “No, no, that cannot be,” he said. “Your mother has to know this. I did not mislead her. I never lied to her about what this would be. She was never going to be my wife, and you were never going to—” The Baron looked into Tybalt’s stricken face and stopped justifying himself. He looked down at the boy’s physical condition. “You need new clothes, boy,” he said. “And I would imagine your mother wants some food in your belly.”

  Tybalt nodded. “Yes, sir. Yes, please.”

  “That, I can do. You were not born into—” He gestured at the mansion behind him—“this. You and your mother must understand that. Men in this country can take multiple wives, but I did not take her as a wife. Remind her of that. Remind her that she understood that when we—” He swallowed. “Please just remind her. And I will send along some food and clothing. A tutor to instruct you. Just—” He looked back at the manor with a grumpy expression, then lowered his voice—“Just do not come back here without sending word to me in advance. Tell the tutor that you wish to see me. Otherwise, you must wait for me to come and see you.”

  Tybalt deflated. “But you never come to our hut anymore.”

  “I know it may be difficult, but this is how it has to be,” the Baron replied, his expression turning stern. “You were not born to my wife. If you were, things would be different between us. As things stand, some education, some clothing, and some food are all I can offer you. Do you understand?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Do you accept this reality?” the Baron asked.

  Do I have a choice? Tybalt remembered thinking.

  But he only nodded again, blinking back the tears that threatened to burst from the corners of his eyes.

  —

  “Is this story coming to a point?” the angel asked. “I do not mean to be impatient. I simply do not see the roots of your supposed hatred in these juvenile—”

  “You’re right,” Tybalt shot back. “You don’t see. Just give it a little damned time. This was my life, all right? These memories have only taken what, a few minutes of your time to absorb? What exactly is the rush?”

  The angel looked surprisingly chastened.

  “Well, my apologies,” she said slowly, the words coming out almost painfully. “Perhaps you do have a point. In the realm of the dead, I am rather accustomed to things going smoothly, quickly and easily, without much variability. Human things happen more slowly. I should remember the virtues of Lord Mudo. Foremost among them is patience.”

  Tybalt breathed out forcefully and recovered his poise.

  Right, he thought. Where was I?