“I know she left you for my dad, and I probably remind you of him, but I don’t think you should hold that against me. I’m my own person.”

His laugh matches the shards of ice around us. “I’m not holding who your father is against you.”

“Then why did you hesitate?”

He raises his brows.

“When I got stabbed. I heard it. You stopped them from healing me.”

“That wasn’t from petty jealousy.”

“Then what?”

“Nepotism,” he says slowly.

“Because you loved my mom?” My brows draw together as I stare at him. He doesn’t seem like the kind of man to favor the child of his ex.

“No. Because I love my daughter.” His words are slow, like he’s waiting for me to catch them.

I step back.

“I can feel the magic in you,” he says. “So much of it. Did you think that only came from your mother?” He sneers. “It certainly didn’t come from that pretender of a man you apparently thought was your father. Not an ounce of power in him. Weak.”

I’d bristle at what he’s saying about Dad if my mind weren’t tumbling away from me, trying to put it together and resist putting it together at the same time.

“You are mine,” he says.

I’m so cold, I think he’s building a wall of ice around me again, but it’s just his chilly expression as he stares, waiting.

“That’s not possible. I know your bodies are frozen when you become immortal. You can’t have kids.” He’s playing with me.

He waves a hand, like my confusion is trivial. “Your mother was pregnant before we became immortal. We didn’t know anything about what would happen to our bodies because of it. She didn’t know that you could never be born. It ate at her. She wanted you. I wanted you too, but it killed her to think about the possibility of you. Joseph”—he spits the name—“took advantage of that.”

“Don’t talk about my father like that.”

“I’m your father.” He says the words like if they’re hard enough, I’ll believe them.

But he’s lying. I have Dad’s hair. Mom always agreed when I held that picture of us at the beach and tried to remember whatever piece of him I could.

You have your father’s hair, she’d agree. Not, you have your daddy’s hair, which is how she usually referred to him.

My heart skips a beat. Lucius’s hair is an almost white blond… just like mine when it’s not dyed.