He never expected it to be difficult to find his home from the air, not even this high up. Once the darkness fell it became easier still, with the cream stone lit up and the landscaped gardens separating the house from the rest of the world lest it be contaminated by the common people.

The lake behind it was black. The fountain in front sparkled like sunlight. And between the two opposites sprawled the wings of Castle Cavendish, a blot on an otherwise perfect land.

Quentin descended toward the courtyard between the two wings. The closer to the ground, the less he had to pull from inside himself to keep warm, and though he was at the very limit of what he had left, he remembered what it was like to freeze the world around Annis and he began to draw on the ambient energy as his feet touched gravel.

November was bitterly cold, but it was nowhere near freezing, and it was certainly nowhere near absolute zero. He’d been a fool to fail to take advantage of the radiator on the train, but the outside world was filled with warmth, and he drew it into himself as he strode toward the doors.

Water in the storm which surrounded him turned to snow and spiraled away in flurries. Gravel iced over in his wake. The more heat he absorbed the more alert he became, the more renewed he felt.

The more power he held in his hands.

He laughed at how ridiculous it all was. Centuries of crossbreeding human beings like cattle and it came down to this.

The gravel rattled away from him and then froze at his heels. He could vaguely make out the bright walls of the house beyond the cloud of his cocoon.

It occurred to him that if he was to kill his father, he might need to be able to see the man, but the wind was beyond his control.

How dare it?

The world was his to command, yet it disobeyed him.

Why wouldn’t it? You aren’t even in control of yourself.

The voice was small, but it was persistent, he gave it that. And perhaps it had a point.

How did he control himself? It was difficult to remember. Numbers. Counting.

He curled a lip as he counted down from ten, but nothing happened.

You must actually want to be calm, nagged the voice.

Quentin snorted at the idea and started toward the house. He knew it like the scars on his own body. He had grown up with both, except one remained the same all those years and the other changed.

Year.

After year.

After abuse.

After abuse.

The wind yowled and pelted gravel against stone, against, glass, against flesh, and there was another scream.

A man’s scream.

Quentin strode toward it until the figure was sucked into his world, pulled into the eye of the storm as though plucked from obscurity and cast into the light.

The man was elderly. Thin. Cuts and scrapes were on his forehead, the backs of his hands. His white hair looked like electricity had jolted through his frame.

“L-Lord B-Banbury?” he stammered, his eyes growing wide.

Quentin stopped and rose his chin. “Higson. Where is my father?”

Higson’s breath clouded on frozen air, and he shrank in on himself for warmth. “In his office, my lord. But you cannot…” His voice withered and died under Quentin’s stare.

“I can,” Quentin seethed, “and I shall.”

“Then at least allow me to announce you properly,” Higson wheedled.

Quentin stepped closer. He raised a hand and cupped Higson’s cheek, leaning in until he was only inches from the other man’s face. “Tell me something,” he breathed.

Higson quailed and shivered under the touch. “A-anything, my lord.”

“Every year,” Quentin said, “you came to fetch me, didn’t you? Every birthday. You did as he asked. You took me to him.”

Higson’s gaze clouded and he tried to pull back, but Quentin encased him fully in his telekinetic grasp before he could slip free. “It wasn’t… I didn’t know!”

Quentin’s lips twisted into a cold smile, and he approved of their decision. “Perhaps not the first time. But you cannot be so blind as to fail to recognize that you had taken me to him and the very next day I was bloodied and bandaged. And yet still you worked here. Still you came to get me the next time. And the next. For thirteen years, Higson.”

Higson rasped for breath. “Yes,” he whimpered. “But Her Grace-”

Quentin leaned closer until their noses almost touched. “Choose your next words carefully.”

Higson’s exhalations washed over him, providing even more warmth to steal. “My lord, Her Grace swore that you were well. That you were exhausted after your accidents. She refused to allow anyone else to nurse you back to health. Even the doctors weren’t allowed to spend much time with you. I wasn’t there, my lord! For any of them!”

“Accidents?” Quentin’s voice was as cold as the wind. “You think they were accidents?”

Higson flinched, but couldn’t move. “O-of course, my lord…” His voice wavered and cracked.

Quentin reached for the last of Higson’s warmth.

Don’t.

He hesitated.

Don’t kill him. The voice begged with him. He doesn’t know. She made him forget.

He snarled. The voice wanted him to believe that Mama had betrayed him, hidden Father’s transgressions, pulled the wool over the eyes of the very man who had taken Quentin to his abuser every single year.

Quentin wasn’t going to believe it. He would prove the voice a liar.

“Higson, how long have you been with my family?”

Higson struggled to move his lips. His eyes were half closed. “All my life, my lord.”

Quentin smiled with triumph. “You took my father to my grandfather when he was a child. Every year. Yes?”

Higson shook his head as strenuously as he could. “No, my lord! I was only a footman at that time.”

Innocent, the tiny voice howled.

Quentin snarled and tossed Higson aside. “Very well. But you go now. If I find you again, I won’t spare you.”

Higson’s response - if there was any at all - was lost to the wind.

* * *

He tore the main entrance off its hinges and cast it aside. Doors which had stood for three hundred years were tossed away like kindling, and Quentin stepped into the main hall.

The chandelier overhead fractured and fell, adding a thousand teardrops of crystal to the cyclone. He walked toward the east wing without needing to see where he was going. He knew exactly how many steps it would take to get there, how long the corridor to his father’s office was.

A shape breached his whirlwind. Tall. Dark. Broad.

Quentin halted as Father stepped into his world.

It was almost too much to take in. Quentin expected to find Father in his office, not here. He expected Father to be surprised, not calm.

He didn’t expect the tendrils of bright blackness which coiled around his father’s shape like a rip in the fabric of reality.

But he was here, and Quentin’s hands trembled with his fury. He felt helpless and triumphant all at once, simultaneously a man close to achieving vengeance and a child caught with sweets stuffed into his mouth from a jar he was forbidden to open.

“Quentin.” Father’s voice dripped with disdain.

No. Not quite disdain.

Disappointment.

“What do you think you are doing?”

Quentin bellowed incoherently and plucked the crystal shards from his storm to fling directly at his father.

They never reached him.

The duke arched one dark grey eyebrow and the remains of the chandelier hung in the air between them, held by both their gifts, going nowhere.

“I told you,” Father said, “that you must learn control.”

Quentin’s heart raced. It beat so fast that he thought it might stop. The blood pounded in his ears, deafening him.

“You wanted me to come home.” He wanted to roar it, to shout it at the top of his voice, but it fell out, weak and uncertain.

The wind died down. Everything caught up in it, from gravel to fragments of metal to blades of grass, fell listlessly to the the ground.

“Mm.” Father glanced to the crystal until it too clattered against the marble floor. “Indeed I did.”

Quentin tried to take a step back. The anger quailed and flickered, torn asunder by fear. “Why?”

Father stepped closer.

“You,” he said lowly, “are seven years late, and there is much for you to learn.”

Quentin tried to shake his head. He grasped for anything in the hallway that he could reach to assault his father with, but nothing obeyed his command.

Father turned on his heel and strode down the corridor, and Quentin was dragged behind him like a fish caught on a line.