He’d been so desperate to leave that he’d gone to Ashwood willingly, rather than waiting to be recruited like all the other buskers. And when the magic sickness swept Creije, Wesley hadn’t worried about the family he’d left behind.

He hadn’t mourned for their deaths.

He’d been grateful for them.

He’d grown up as a prisoner and his guards had never afforded him any kind of love. In the most twisted way, Dante Ashwood became the loving father Wesley never had.

And now they were telling him that all of that, every hateful thing in Wesley’s memories that he’d tried to scrape out, was because of some prophecy?

“Please.”

Saxony held out her hand for his and Wesley realized that she was crying. He wasn’t sure when she’d started, but she didn’t look like she’d ever stop.

“Please,” Saxony said again. “Let me help you.”

Wesley didn’t want her help.

He rarely accepted help from anyone, because that was a surefire way to show weakness, and weakness got people killed in this realm.

“If what you’re saying is true and you all think I’m such a monster,” Wesley said, “then maybe I should start acting like one.”

“As opposed to before when you were a saint?” Tavia asked.

Wesley glared at her.

Though a part of him wanted nothing more than to take her hand and run away from this place.

“You’re saying that my mother killed herself to keep me from the world,” Wesley said.

That was how much of a bastard he was.

That was how much his mother had hated him.

“She should have done a better job.”

Wesley’s hands shook by his sides, not with anger or frustration, but with magic. It hummed through him, rattling his bones and rising up to the surface of his skin so that a layer of shadow clung to him like morning mist.

He couldn’t control it.

He couldn’t stop it.

“Vea was trying to keep you safe,” Saxony’s amja said.

Her eyes were on his hands and Wesley wanted to shove them behind his back and hide the fact that he wasn’t in control. This was his grandmother and she was scared of him.

They all were.

“Vea loved you so much that she cursed our Kin,” Saxony’s amja said. “A child has not been born here since she performed that spell. Because of what we did and the magical laws we broke, the Many Gods may never bless us with another. Once you were gone, everything went wrong.”

“I didn’t go anywhere,” Wesley said. “You threw me out.”

Saxony’s amja sighed and the first thing Wesley thought was that nobody had ever sighed at him like that before. Like they were simultaneously disappointed in him and in themselves.