Once upon a time, when he was a boy of fourteen, just beginning to understand the world he lived in and his future role within it, Leander ran away from home.
He hadn’t planned it. He awoke in the dead of a particularly balmy spring night with the glow of the moon so bright through his windows it lit the entire room with a magical, pearled brilliance. He slid out of bed and crossed to the windows, looked out over the foggy, leafy shire, and felt the overwhelming need to feel the dewed grass under his bare feet.
He’d always been stealthy, even more so once he’d begun to Shift three years before, so it was effortless to steal down the long curving staircase of what was then his parents’ manor house and slip out through the back kitchen door, the one with such well-oiled hinges they never s
