“He’s vanished from the school I placed him in!” Denshire snarled. “If he didn’t drown himself in the river there, you must have taken him so you can turn him into a molly boy!”

“You lost my son!” Kendra said in a low, furious voice. Her sword ready in her right hand, she stalked toward her former husband, her expression murderous. “You treated him badly and put him in a school so vile that he must have run away. Dear God, what has happened to him?” With her left hand, she snapped off the protective button on the end of the blade.

Swearing, Denshire backpedaled. “Get away from me, you crazy bitch!”

Lucas took two swift steps to Kendra and caught her arm, immobilizing her. “He probably deserves killing, but not by you,” he said in a low voice. “Christopher will need you when we find him. You can’t be there for him if you’re imprisoned and hanged.”

She looked up at him, wildness in her eyes. “Kendra!” he snapped. “For everyone’s sake, don’t do this!”

The wildness faded. As she mastered herself, Denshire bolted from the academy, his friend at his heels. In the lacerating silence that followed, Athena said thoughtfully, “He really does deserve to be skewered. Perhaps the Fencing Females should have a drawing for the privilege?”

Her words produced a ripple of strained laughter. Kendra’s gaze moved around the circle of women. “Thank you for your support, my friends,” she said unsteadily. “I’ll take my leave now, but I hope to see you all next week.”

She donned her cloak, the length swirling around her scandalously beautiful legs. Lucas also grabbed his coat, pulling it on as she left the academy. When they were outside, he took her arm. “Slow down and breathe.”

“But Christopher might be dead! Denshire said that he might have drowned himself from misery,” she cried, on the verge of breaking down entirely. “Denshire doesn’t care about him beyond the fact that he’s the heir.”

A narrow alley ran between the buildings they were passing, so Lucas drew her into it, where they’d have the privacy for him to wrap her shaking body in his arms. “Christopher is your son,” he said quietly, feeling her anguish. “Can you imagine the boy you love taking his own life because school is so dreadful?”

She drew a slow breath and he felt some of her frantic tension ease. “No. No, he wouldn’t do that. He would run away and find a safe place to hide. Then he’d try to write me.”

“That sounds like what a clever boy would do,” Lucas agreed, stroking her back as he would soothe a nervous pet. “There might not even be a river. Denshire could have made that up just to upset you more.”