Alastair hesitated. “I watched him make it,” he said finally. They had reached the Carstairs carriage now, with its design of castle towers on the door. Many more carriages lined the curb beside it. “Because he had such faith in Christopher, he had faith in himself. I never quite thought of friendship like that—as something that makes you more than you are.”

“But, Alastair—”

“No more questions,” said Alastair, placing Cordelia inside the carriage and swinging himself up after her. He smiled, that rare charming smile of his that was all the better for its rarity. “You were very brave, Layla, but you need healing, too. Time to go home.”

DAYS PAST: CIRENWORTH HALL, 1898

Cordelia often felt alone when it was just her and her parents, but never as much as when Alastair went away to the Academy. While he was gone, the rest of the Carstairs family traveled to India, to Paris, to Cape Town and Canada, but they were at Cirenworth for the holidays when he finally returned.

She had waited months for his return, but when he stepped out of the carriage—taller, more angular, and sharper than ever—he seemed like a different person. He’d always been short-tempered and prickly, but now he would barely speak to her. When he did, it was mostly to tell her not to bother him.

Her parents ignored the transformation. When Cordelia asked her father why Alastair wouldn’t spend time with her, he smiled at her and told her that teenage boys went through “times like this” and she would “understand when she was older.” “He’s been having fun with boys his own age all year and now he’s got to be back in the countryside with the likes of us,” Elias said with a chuckle. “He’ll get over it.”

This was not a satisfying answer. Cordelia tried to put herself in Alastair’s path as much as she could, to force him to acknowledge her. Often, though, she couldn’t even find him. He spent hours locked in his bedroom, and when she knocked on the door, he didn’t even bother to tell her to go away. He just ignored her. The only way she knew he’d been in there was when he emerged to eat, or to announce he was going out for a long walk by himself.

This went on for a few weeks. Cordelia’s feelings changed from disappointment, to sorrow, to blaming herself, to annoyance, and then to anger. At dinner one night she threw a spoon at him and shouted, “Why won’t you talk to me?” Alastair caught the spoon out of the air, put it down on the table, and glared at her in silence.

“Don’t throw things, Cordelia,” her mother said.