Amja’s sigh was deep. “Though Vea loved your father, his spirit was tied to the trees and hers to the wind. When she came back after those long months, she came back pregnant.”

Saxony’s lips parted, but she couldn’t find the breath to gasp or the words to demand it was a lie.

“That baby was Malik,” Amja said.

Saxony didn’t know what to say to that, and though she thought that she should have been sad or even angry with her mother, the first thought that came to her mind was: That’s why Father doesn’t like to hear Malik’s name. Not because his son died, but because he never had a son to begin with.

She knew it was a horrible thought, because as far she remembered, Bastian had always been kind to her brother. He’d always played with him and hugged him, and never liked to scold him even when he was being a little brat. Still, she couldn’t help but think it.

“You know Malik was destined for greatness,” Amja said. “He was supposed to be our Liege, but there was a darkness inside of him.”

“A darkness,” Saxony repeated. “He was just a baby.”

“And we couldn’t wait to see the man he would grow into,” Amja said. “But then an Intuitcrafter saw in a vision that he would bring about war and death if he was raised by magic.”

Saxony didn’t think laughing was the appropriate reaction, but how else was she supposed to handle the sincerity with which her amja spoke? A vision, one in thousands, had scared her that much?

“It can’t be worse than the war and death we’re facing now,” Saxony said. “It was just one Crafter’s vision.”

“I thought the same, until another saw it,” Amja said. “Both of them saw that future and only that future. It wasn’t just one in a hundred scenarios, Saxony. It was the only future they saw, in a hundred different ways. And so we made a choice.”

Saxony shot up.

She wasn’t prepared to hear this.

She wasn’t ready to know what they had done.

And yet—

“Did you kill him?” she asked.

“Many Gods, no,” Bastian said. “He was a child, Saxony.”

“But we knew we had to do something,” Amja said. “And so we decided to hide his powers and send him far away. We swore the two Intuitcrafters to secrecy and they carried it to their graves.”

Saxony’s breath didn’t just catch, but disappeared altogether.

“You used death magic to hide him,” she said in a whisper. “A blood spell.”

The darkest of all Crafter magic was the kind that required a sacrifice.