Being in this house again, Rowan had a harder time keeping up his stoic outer demeanor than he thought he would. He tried to keep as quiet as he could when Aster was showing him around, but he knew he wasn’t doing a good job of keeping everything under wraps. Aster saw how melancholy he was anyway.

And how could he not be? Being here after so long, after so much had happened over the years… he felt as if he could see his own ghost drifting through the halls, or maybe the ...