“Morgan… Morgan…” His father clasped trembling hands, each breath a wet whistling in and out of his soft lungs. His eyes were teary again. “I spoke hastily.”

“My lord, you spoke from your heart.”

“Hastily and from my heart, yes,” his father admitted. “I would not deny you your life’s work, Morgan. Therein lies Danfey glory. But in pursuing it, would you deny me your heir?”

How can I deny him anything when he looks so pale and poorly?

“Of course not.”

“Then let us not quarrel,” his father said, beseeching. “Let us instead make our own vows. You will choose yourself a wife before the leaves fall, and I will not plague you about antithetical incantations.”

He returned to the dinner table. “Almost, but not quite. I will choose a wife, and you will aid me with my antithetical incantations. My lord, this quarrel started because I asked you to be my second set of eyes. Let us end it with you helping me put a finger on where my reworking of the transmutation sigils went awry.”

His father coughed, trying to hide his feelings. “You would trust me so far?”

“My lord…” Morgan kissed his father’s forehead. “Talk nonsense like that and you’ll have us quarrelling again.”

“No, no,” said his father hastily. “That’s behind us. Come. You can show me these newfangled sigils from the beginning.”

“Now? Perhaps now is too soon. Perhaps you should rest, then—”

“Talk nonsense like that and you’ll have us quarrelling again,” said his father, mock-scolding this time. “Enough, Morgan. I am not dying quite yet. Let us return to your attic and do magework together.”

Chapter Five

But his father’s strength was short-lived. Morgan was scarcely halfway through his explanation of the theory underpinning his brand new sigil and incant, being careful to gloss over certain aspects he knew would cause dismay, when the tremor marring the old man’s hands spread throughout his frail body.

He set down his fresh crucible with its burden of rare and costly powdered azafris.

“My lord, perhaps we might continue this discourse on the morrow? Your lack of enthusiasm reproaches me for failing to remember that most basic rule: simplicity must form the foundation of all magework.”

A muted gleam in his father’s eye told him the ruse was noted… and appreciated.

After escorting him back down the mansion’s narrow attic staircase to the third floor landing, and from there to his privy suite of apartments, and seeing him reposed once more in the bed he should not have abandoned, Morgan made his way outside to clear his mind with fresh air.

Why had his reworking of Hartigan’s sigil failed?

Strolling the mansion’s immaculate garden, aware of servants’ raised voices in the stables, of the temperature falling as rain clouds gathered overhead like a frown, of the fear he felt for his father ever-simmering beneath the surface, he dismantled his work step by painstaking step.