I go to follow her out of the office, but Aisling steps in my way. I glare. “Move, or I will move you.”

“You will certainly try.” Her lips curve, but her eyes remain icy. “You might even land a few blows, being an Amazon yourself.”

The room takes a sickeningly slow spin around me. Surely she didn’t say what I think she just said. “Excuse me?”

“Honestly, it was rather clever of you. I had no idea I should be looking for your past right under my nose. Shiloh Demaki, daughter of Esther and Lucas Demaki, both priests to the crown.”

Holy fuck. She knows. I clear my throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do.” Her gaze flicks to my legs, and there’s no way to deny it further. She knows exactly who I am and exactly what happened to me. Aisling’s face doesn’t exactly go soft, but something almost like remorse appears, there and gone so quickly I’m half sure I imagined it. “That was a great failing of mine. I didn’t realize the extent of their abuse until you were already gone and they’d moved on to other children. Children who didn’t stay silent.”

Rage whites out my vision for one long moment. An echo of Monroe’s voice in my head layers over her mother’s. We don’t blame victims. Apparently that’s only true for the next Amazon queen—not the current one.

When I finally manage to speak, my voice is hoarse. “I know you are not blaming me for my parents’ actions.”

“Of course not.” Her tone is less than convincing. “However, it’s been dealt with, and it’s important to me that we move on.”

Understanding comes in slow waves, spiking my fury higher, hotter. It loosens my tongue and has me spitting words best kept internal. “I see. You fucked up and let precious Amazon children be hurt by people who were close to you. An unforgivable sin in your daughter’s eyes. If Monroe knew my parents were Amazons, that you knew—”

“I didn’t know,” she says it so sharply, I almost believe her.

If not for her own words. “You just said you didn’t know the extent of it, which means you did know something.”

Aisling’s expression goes even colder, a confirmation in and of itself. “It’s in the past.”

In the past, and yet it’s shaped my entire life, my future even. If not for what I experienced at my parents’ hands, I wouldn’t find coming to Sabine Valley so challenging. I wouldn’t have started pushing Broderick away when he needed me to pull him close and have his back. I wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.