“You look like me,” the boy rasped. His voice carried the roughness of sleeping outdoors.
Tobias’s pulse slammed against his ribs. “What is your name?”
“Jaxon. Jaxon Mirek.”
Mirek. Tobias felt a sting in his chest. That had been his mother’s surname before she married August Rainer. She had died seven years before, leaving behind a lifetime’s worth of unspoken memories. She had rarely spoken about her past at all. Tobias remembered her laughing, cooking, humming in the mornings. He did not remember her ever speaking of family.
“How old are you,” Tobias asked.
“Seventeen,” Jaxon replied. His gaze wandered to Tobias’s tailored coat before returning to his face as if afraid of being judged. “I am not trying to trick you. I am not running some scam. I have been on my own for a while. It has not gone well.”
Tobias swallowed the dryness in his throat. The more he looked at Jaxon, the more the resemblance tightened around his thoughts. “Do you know anything about your parents,” he asked.