“Was Arthur our guardian angel?”

I looked down at my son, healthy and whole and warm against my side, his heart beating strong and steady beneath his shirt, a heart that beat at all only because an old man he had known for a few short months had chosen, near the end of his life, to do one purely good thing.

I did not tell Caleb, that night by the fire, the whole shape of what Arthur had done, the poisoned house and the circling heirs and the strange cold bargain that had started it all.

He was still too young for the hard parts, and there would be time for them later, when his shoulders had grown wide enough to carry them.