Page 56 of His Greatest Treasure

By the time morning came, I was tired and wasn’t feeling any more optimistic than I had the day before.

It was only then that it occurred to me that she’d said she could see all my bonds, the way I could see hers. That meant she could see my bond with Blaze. There was no way she’d be able to miss it. It shone a bright orange-gold, blazing like fire, and it was the strongest and thickest bond I had.

Oh dear. Great Aunt Evangeline knew my secret.

That didn’t make me feel any better, to be honest. Although I didn’t feel too much worse. She hadn’t sounded angry about it, so maybe she wasn’t cross with me.

Maybe she wouldn’t tell Lord Somerville, either.

That would be the best thing for me. If Great Aunt Evangeline got better and then we could talk about bonds and she could explain them to me, and I could look through her bonds more carefully and see what they were like, and then I could show her my bond with Blaze and tell her all about him, about how small and sweet he was, about how pretty his eyes were, about how my stomach began to tear itself apart when we were together but it tore itself apart more when we were apart.

I had terrible cramp inside me by then. I’d learned to live with the feeling but I wished again that Glenwise were here. He’d be able to do something about it and make me feel better.

The castle stayed silent, almost like it was in mourning all over again. I wanted to ask about my brother Alexander, but didn’t know who to approach. I couldn’t ask Mother because it would upset her.

Eventually, I decided to risk asking Aunt Silvia. I hurried up to her studio where she painted and knocked quietly on the open door.

Aunt Silvia looked round at me and gave a small smile. “Come in, Alfie. Take a seat.”

I did as I was told, but I was too restless and I stood up again almost immediately.

Aunt Silvia had this way of looking at me that made me sure she could see more than she let on. Her eyes were silver, just like mine, but they had a knowing glint to them. Her artist’s eyes were very observant.

“What is it you want to know?”

“Oh, um, well, you see—”

“We’ll never get round to talking about it if you spend that long building up to asking me.”

As she said it, she gave an ironic smile, and it made me chuckle weakly. At least I didn’t feel really foolish for my blurting out rubbish.

“I wanted to know.”

“Know what?”

“About Alexander.”

“Ah. I’m afraid we’ve been forbidden from talking about him.”

“Oh.”

I’d known that was a risk because I’d spent my whole life hearing his name and not being able to learn anything else about him at all. I don’t know why I was so disappointed.

I needed to know, though.

“Was he- was he banished?”

“No. What makes you think that?”

“Nobody really talks about him.”

Aunt Silvia glanced around, peeking into the corridor outside. When she spoke, her voice was low so that only the two of us could hear.

“But we say his name, Alfie. And he is in our records.”

I felt a flash of guilt for making her talk about this, considering her own son would be scratched from our records soon. As soon as anyone got around to it. Normally, though, it would be Rhod who did all that work, but he was gone.

It seemed like everyone was going. My stomach cramped again at the thought of them all being out there, alone.

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