The first sign that something unusual had happened on the Blackthorn estate was the sudden appearance of a mountain where no mountain had been before.
The second was Nina.
The tiny pixie arrived at the breakfast room window shortly after nine in the morning, dragging a leaf almost twice her size and wearing the expression of someone who had discovered a secret too wonderful to keep.
Unfortunately, Nina had never been particularly good at keeping secrets.
She tapped the glass with a twig.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Cassian, who had been carefully arranging slices of fruit into the shape of a dragon on his plate, looked up.
Beyond the window, the pixie hovered impatiently, her translucent wings beating so quickly that they appeared as a shimmering blur.
Her pale green dress was decorated with tiny white flowers, and a small pouch hung from her waist.
Cassian immediately abandoned his dragon.
“Nina!”
He scrambled down from his chair.
Lady Seraphina Blackthorn, who sat beside him, caught the back of his collar before he could dash across the room.
“Where are you going, little adventurer?”
“Nina is outside!”
“I can see that.”
“She wants to tell me something.”
“Then she can tell you through the window.
You do not need to launch yourself across the breakfast room to accomplish it.”
Cassian considered this.
It was a reasonable argument, although he suspected it was also an unnecessarily restrictive one.
His four older siblings watched the exchange with varying degrees of amusement.
Lucian, the eldest of the five children, had been reading a report left by their grandfather.
At eleven, he had already developed the habit of examining a situation before deciding whether it deserved his attention.
Dorian, who was a year younger, had been attempting to persuade a reluctant servant to provide him with another helping of honey cakes.
Evangeline sat with her hands folded beside her teacup, listening to the conversation while pretending to concentrate on her breakfast.
Lysandra, meanwhile, had been trying to teach a small enchanted wooden horse to jump over a spoon.
The horse had refused.
Lysandra considered this a personal insult.
“Mother,” Cassian pleaded, “may I open the window?”
Seraphina sighed with the resignation of a woman who understood that raising five children required considerably more patience than raising one.
“Open it carefully.”
Cassian obeyed.
Nina shot through the opening before he had fully drawn the curtains aside.
“Good morning!” she announced.
Then she spotted the fruit dragon.
“Oh!
Is that a real dragon?”
“No,” Cassian replied.
“It’s breakfast.”
Nina landed on the table and circled the arrangement, looking disappointed.
“Then it isn’t very useful.”
“It would be if you were hungry.”
“Dragons eat people.”
“Some dragons eat sheep.”
“Some eat people.”
“Some eat sheep and people.”
Nina stared at him.
Cassian stared back.
“Why do I suspect this conversation is going to become a debate about the dietary habits of imaginary dragons?”
“Because you know Cassian,” Dorian answered.
Before Cassian could defend the dignity of his fruit dragon, Nina clapped her hands.
“I found something!”
That announcement accomplished what neither the pixie nor the fruit dragon could have managed alone.
Every Blackthorn sibling turned toward her.
“What did you find?” Evangeline asked.
“A cave!”
Nina spread her arms dramatically.
“A huge cave!
Well, perhaps not huge from the outside, but it goes underground, and there are shiny things inside.
Beautiful shiny things!
Gold-colored things!
Crystals!
Stones that glow in the dark!”
Lysandra abandoned her wooden horse.
“Gold?”
“Maybe!”
“Jewels?”
“Possibly!”
“Ancient treasure?”
Nina hesitated.
“I didn’t actually go inside.”
Lysandra’s expression changed.
“Then how do you know there are shiny things?”
“Because I saw them!”
“From outside?”
“Yes!”
“How?”
Nina pointed an accusing finger at her.
“Because I have eyes, Lysandra.”
Dorian laughed so hard that he nearly spilled his tea.
Lysandra crossed her arms.
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“It proves I saw something shiny!”
“It proves you saw something shiny.
It doesn’t prove it is treasure.”
Nina puffed out her cheeks.
“You’re all very difficult.”
Cassian, who had been listening with increasing interest, climbed back onto his chair.
“Where is the cave?”
Nina’s wings brightened.
“Near the new rocky hills, beyond the eastern woodland.
You know, where the ground has been rumbling since the great sea monster and the fire lizards had their argument.”
Lucian’s expression grew serious.
“The Kraken and the salamanders?”
“Yes!” Nina chirped.
They fought, the ground shook, and afterward there was a loud cracking noise.
Then a whole piece of the hillside moved.”
She made a complicated gesture with both hands.
“Like this!”
The gesture was sufficiently confusing that nobody understood what she meant.
Evangeline leaned forward.
“Did you see the fight?”
“No.
I was somewhere else.”
“Then how do you know what happened?”
“Everyone knows.
The water spirits have been complaining about the Kraken’s temper, and the salamanders say the Kraken started it.”
“Which means neither side is trustworthy,” Lucian observed.
“Exactly,” Dorian said.
“The water spirits exaggerate everything, and salamanders think burning something is a perfectly acceptable way to settle a disagreement.”
Nina nodded enthusiastically.
“Anyway, the cave is new!”
That was the word that finally caught Lucian’s attention.
New.
A newly exposed cave within Blackthorn territory, appearing only days after a confrontation between two powerful magical creatures, was not something that could safely be dismissed as an ordinary geological curiosity.
Especially not on an estate where ordinary geography had a habit of behaving like a particularly uncooperative illusionist.
Lucian closed the report.
“Has Grandfather been informed?”
Nina’s wings slowed.
“I don’t know.”
“Has Grandmother?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has anyone responsible for the estate’s safety been informed?”
The pixie looked offended.
“I came here to tell you!”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
Nina opened her mouth, closed it, and then pointed at Cassian.
“He’s the one who listens properly.”
Cassian blinked.
“I do?”
“Yes!
You don’t ask so many boring questions.”
“That’s because I don’t know the answers.”
Dorian burst out laughing again.
Even Evangeline smiled.
Lucian, however, was already considering the implications of the discovery.
A new cave could mean exposed minerals, an old underground passage, a previously sealed chamber, or a pocket of unstable magic.
If the cave had been opened by the recent battle, its entrance might also conceal structural damage.
The shiny objects were the least important part of the report.
Naturally, that made them the most interesting part to Lysandra.
“We should go,” she declared.
“We should inform Grandfather,” Lucian corrected.
“We can do both.”
“Not without permission.”
Lysandra looked at him as though he had personally betrayed the spirit of