Photos of different sizes hang on the walls—each one in an elaborate gold frame with a different Victorian design. I walk over to one, and my heart speeds up. Mom stands onstage in a black ball gown with a crown of roses in her hair. Her red-painted lips are pulled back into a wide smile. One of her hands waves to the man behind her on the stage. I squint at him. David Copperfield.

I keep drifting down to photo after photo. Each one feels like an extra puzzle piece for a full picture I’ve never been able to see. Lucius is in many of them, always looking at her instead of the camera. He’s starting to give me creepy stalker vibes until I get to one in a circular gold frame where he’s staring straight into the camera while my mom presses into his side and kisses his cheek. It’d be a cute pose if not for the smirk on his face—he doesn’t look happy. He looks like he won. Mom looks like she’s in love.

This new, bigger revelation locks into place. They were together—before Mom left and had me and Parker, she was an immortal magician, and she apparently dated Lucius. If he knows who I am, then it makes sense why he seems to dislike me in particular. She left him and hooked up with my dad, and I’m a walking memory of that.

Shit.

If he knows who I am, he can’t possibly want me to win, but maybe he doesn’t know. Maybe that’s the reason Julia told me not to go digging.

But I bet he has a lot of stories. Maybe I could fill up the years I missed with her with stories of her past. It seems like she had a long one. The realization sends my world spinning. I’ve always thought of Mom’s life as cut short, but that was only her life with me. Does every picture have her in it? I twist and drag Roman toward the end of the hallway, because for some reason I’m still gripping his hand, and I stop in front of huge double doors. Above them are two painted portraits in frames that look like gold-plated roses melded together. Lucius stares down his nose at me with his ice-blue eyes. A golden plaque at the bottom of the frame has his name in curling letters. The other painting is of Mom. She’s got her signature rose in her hair with a faint smile on her face. The painter somehow captured excitement in her wide brown eyes, or maybe it’s in the slight raise of one of her eyebrows, like she’s joking with whoever she’s looking at. The plaque at the bottom reads CASSIA.

She looks like the version of Mom I loved most—the one laughing with her toes in the sand.