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A voice in my mind corrected me.Once upon a time, she wasn’t.

Mother’s illness could ruin her trade. The neighbors might not be cruel or ridicule my mother, but they’d be uncomfortable around her. Nobles would stop doing business with her. The Crown, however sympathetic to the born, might retract their patronage, unable to rely on her if she kept breaking her projects.

I’d lose my minions. Things would go back to how they were when I was little.

To top it off, we’d be poor, demoted to social pariahs. The timber girl with a physical distortion. The carpenter mother with a mind distortion.

Above all that, she would keep suffering.

I set my jaw. I had what I needed to fix this.

The fairytale said the third acorn would give its owner a restored life. It would make Mother better. I’d figure out how to use it on her, how to help her, before she lost her mind for good.

That didn’t mean I couldn’t still vanquish a few people. No one looked down their peasant noses on Mother and got away with it. Not with me around.

Mother swatted my skirt aside, maneuvering the wood pin in my knee.

My voice lowered. “Who ignored you?”

“I recognize that tone, Aspen. Don’t go getting ideas. You know how neighbors can get. They don’t understand what they don’t understand, and it doesn’t mean you can boss others around.”

“People are snubbing you! I call that an insult. I call that a problem. When I’m done with them, they’ll change their tune—”

Her face contorted, a red flag that signaled another oncoming meltdown. The stress of arguing with me hadn’t helped.

I pulled her hands from my leg and massaged them. Her muscles relaxed, her wrists slumping.

She sighed. “That feels wonderful.”

“Anything for you,” I said.

“Anything?”

“Okay, I’m sorry. I won’t retaliate, though for your information, my mother bows to no one.”

She gave me a weak smile. “But my timber girl should learn to.”

We went downstairs, where I built a fire in the hearth, boiled water in the kettle, and tucked into a cup of barley tea. Mother’s chair groaned under her weight. She’d forgotten to ask me what surprise I’d brought her. Just as well, since I shouldn’t have told her that anyway. She’d just appeared so scared last night that I had to distract her.

As we sat there, I considered how to use the acorn. The fairytale gave no hints about this. Maybe I needed to chop it into her supper. Or steep it in hot water. She needed to consume it somehow, right?

Just then, a movement in the back window caught my eye. I paused in the act of refilling my tea, my hand suspended over the hearth flames. Did I...did I just see...someone peeking in?

At the opposite side of the house, a group of children passed by the front door, their squeaks ringing through loud and clear.

“They’re looking everywhere for him.”

“Wow, you think the knights will check our quarter, too? I never saw a knight before. Think they’ll knock on doors?”

“Betting so. I heard the First Knight’s leading the hunt.”

“It’s a search, not a hunt. They’re looking for the Royal Son, not a wild boar.”

The Royal Son. He’d gone missing. That’s what had caused the alarm.

The princess and jester’s simpleton son. The public said he had trouble with direction. They also said he possessed an unmistakable face and...

Striking green eyes. Like his father.