After the thorough search of the estate had proved futile, Ragnar wasted no time in expanding the hunt. Guards were dispatched throughout the town, sent to scour every street in Amris and the neighboring settlements beyond it. Yet none of it yielded so much as a single clue to where the boy went.
By dusk, when it became painfully clear that Rowen was no longer anywhere on the estate grounds, Ragnar mounted his horse and rode out himself. He spent the entire night searching for the boy.
Rowen was no longer merely his wife's younger brother in Ragnar's mind. Somewhere along the way, without quite realizing when it had happened, Ragnar had begun to see the boy as someone who belonged to the small family he was building with Circe. That thought alone drove him through the dark hours without rest.
