Bran nodded. “I was told, back at the beginning, to ignore it and hope it went away.” He gave Charles a wry smile. “I wasn’t told what to do about it if she didn’t quit. I don’t know what to do about it now—and the only person who might know—” He growled in frustration. “We didn’t talk about it because we were worried that talking about it might give it power.”

There were things that grew more powerful when spoken of—some of the fae, those who had died, demigods, and some of the spirits of place. Speaking something’s name could draw its attention, and that held its own dangers. Charles could not immediately think of any kind of magic—not a magical being—made worse by speaking of it, but his da knew a lot more about magic than Charles did.

“You think there is something or someone yanking on Leah’s chain,” said Charles. “And that it is all connected to the plot of land where the off-grid squatters disappeared from?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Tell me what you can,” Charles said.

Da nodded. It took him a while to begin, but Charles was patient.

Finally, his da said, “I wasn’t actually out looking for a mate when I left you with your grandfather. The wolf was restless and I couldn’t stay where she …” He stopped speaking and his eyes flashed yellow with grief that belonged both to him and to his wolf.

Charles had heard stories of his mother from his grandfather and his uncles, not from his da. He knew the battles between his parents had lit the forest with their fury. He knew neither of them could speak more than a few words in each other’s language. He knew their love had been a rare and amazing thing to watch. His grandfather liked to claim his only daughter had been soft and dutiful until she met Bran, and that made Charles’s uncles laugh behind their hands. But Charles knew all of that secondhand.

When he had been a child, he’d pretended he would happen upon his mother someday. He dreamed of walking with her in the forest. He wanted to know the extraordinary Blue Jay Woman who had fought with Bran and won. Over his da’s objections, she had carried Charles to term, fighting off the werewolf’s need to change under the full moon. She had died in the process because the spirits exact a price from those who defy the natural order of things, and werewolf women were not meant to bear children.

Charles had known all of his life that his mother’s death had been his fault.

So had his father.