Stealthy feet slipped into the parlor. Lysander did not turn. He knew it was his sister, Atalanta, come to count heads, a restless guardian circling the house, somehow feeling the weight of responsibility to know where every member of the family was at all times. Round and round her path took her, upstairs and down in a constant, edgy circuit. Lysander understood this. He had no need to do it himself, for he could feel the presence of his brother and sister-in-law and little Aurora and his father and Philpot and even the faint, semi-conscious light of Iris breathing fitfully and shallowly in her bed. Some of them felt as cool and soothing as a hand on a feverish brow, like Miranda, or the rasping edge of Philpot's loyal fretfulness, while Cas splashed hot and cold toward the world, saving his simmering warmth for his beloved wife and tiny child.

Fourteen-year-old Attie felt like knife-edged steel, like the flat of the icy blade. It was not the dangerous edge, not toward her family, although she could cut deeply when she wished. Attie was clever, gleaming and strong, and was uniformly both adored and treated cautiously by the Worthington clan.

Attie felt like a good sword by Lysander's side as she came to stand with him at the window.

"The sky is clearing."

Of course she understood what he was gazing at. Attie cleaved through nonsense and took brusque offense to what she considered useless behavior, which invariably included needlework, housekeeping, hair brushing, and the wearing of flounces. Lysander tended to agree with her on the flounces.

They stood together in silence for a long moment, the tall, lean, darkly-clad, haunted-eyed brother and the skinny tatterdemalion with untamed red hair and sharp emerald gaze. They both contemplated the patch of blue. Lysander felt less like the hound that Cas had described him than a wild thing leashed by obligation, a creature by nature unfit to live within four walls, a rough beast that everyone mistakenly believed to be thoroughly domesticated.

"I want you to go to Scotland to find Pol."

Oh thank God. A task, a mission, a way out. A way to help -– and a way to escape.

Attie handed Lysander a piece of paper with an Edinburg address floridly scrawled upon it. Attie went through phases with her handwriting, taking cues from the signatures of great persons of history. She did not seem to have a handwriting of her own quite yet, but appeared to be quite able to forge documents in the style of Henry VIII. Should one be required.

Lysander took the scrap of paper and closed his fist tightly around it. He didn't speak. Words tended to fly through his grasp like small, swift birds he was too clumsy to catch. Because of this, one of his wealthier relations, Elektra's husband Lord Aaron, had insisted that Lysander see this or that "finest physician in England".

"Constipated." They had all frowned at that diagnosis.