I looked down at the well-dressed family, standing on the front steps of the Capitol Building with Zavian Graning, the Federation Minister. My father’s wife was a stunning woman with almond-shaped eyes and dark skin, who must have had Sandian ancestry somewhere, and their children shared a healthy mixture of both their traits. Two daughters and a son. I couldn’t tell their eye color from the black-and-white photo, of course, but the lightness of their irises suggested they had green eyes, just like mine. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the idea that I had half-siblings running around, halfway across the world somewhere.

“What would happen if the truth of my parentage came out?” I asked, pushing the article back to Janta. “If some journalist discovered that Haman ar’Rhea is my father? Would it be a big deal?”

“Well, as I said, Haman is the High Mage of Castalis—the equivalent of a Chief Mage, except that Castalis is one country and not split up into different states like the Federation. That means he technically outranks Lord Iannis, though Canalo is just as big. He wasn’t the High Mage when he was here in Solantha, as his father-in-law had not stepped down from the position, but he was being groomed for the job. It would have been a terrible scandal if it had come out he had an illegitimate daughter with a shifter. His brother, Daram, would have almost certainly gotten the position instead of him, and he would not have been married to his lovely and extremely wealthy bride.”

“That makes sense,” I reluctantly conceded even as resentment bubbled inside me. I could understand my father’s decision, though that didn’t change the fact that he was a selfish bastard. He should have fucking kept his dick in his pants if he didn’t want to face the consequences.

But if he’d done that, then you wouldn’t exist, a voice whispered in my head.

“So now that he’s all happily married and has been the High Mage for over a decade, would you say that it’s no longer a big deal if the world found out I was his daughter?” I wondered aloud. I needed to pin this down for sure, because I wanted to be absolutely certain that my father wasn’t going to decide to come out of the woodwork and claim me before I married Iannis. He could do whatever the hell he wanted after that, but for now, I wanted him as far away from my life as possible.