There. That was the thing Attie had been trying not to think about. But the tone of sadness in Miranda’s voice and the deathly quiet tension in the house and the way that everyone tried so hard, so very hard, not to say it — well, they might as well have screamed it.

Iris might die.

Attie was afraid as she had almost never been afraid, except for that time she accidentally shot Callie with a rifle — and when Attie was afraid she got angry. Very, very angry.

Someone had to do something! Something, preferably, that Attie wanted them to do. There was one person she could always count on, someone who would not argue with her, or tell her that she was being strange or unreasonable, for he himself was far stranger than she.

She went to find Lysander.

LYSANDER WORTHINGTON STOOD IN the front parlor of Worthington House. His gaze was fixed on the window. He was not looking at the short patch of garden in front the house or the walkway up to the entry steps, or the bustling street beyond, where passed a few gleaming carriages among the more workaday vehicles. Nor had he a glance for the house across the street, built in the same era as Worthington House but rather better well-kept and somewhat charming.

The city life of busy London held no interest for Lysander. His gaze remained fixed upon a patch of dirty grayish sky visible through the top of the window. It was just a peek between two brick chimneys but it called to him like a doorway. He was only standing in the parlor because his brother Cas had exasperatedly requested him not to stand in the foyer pining at the front door like a wistful hound.

For some time now, it had been Lysander's habit to slip from the house whenever his beloved family became too much for him, which was rather often, or when they gazed at him with that perplexed mixture of fondness, confusion, and wistfulness that made him flinch. Their longing for man who no longer existed hit upon his raw nerves like ice on bad teeth.

But most of all, he could not bear the beaming vagueness of his mother's gaze.

When he was a boy, she'd always been dreamy and absent-minded while painting, yet also quick-witted and clever.

It had been his sister Elektra, in her direct way, who'd explained that it had been the news of Lysander's alleged death that had sent their madly creative mother into simple madness.

"She's never been the same since your name appeared on the lists. She improved, at least somewhat, when we received the letter that they had not properly identified you, and that you were in a hospital in Portugal. And when you actually came back, she grew better still." She gazed at him for a moment with fearless belief. "And she'll be entirely herself again when you come back to us properly, won't she?"