I know I shouldn’t, but my curiosity takes hold, forcing me to ask, “You knew my father?”

Zairn looks at me as if for the first time, his expression twisting with disgust. “I knew him well.”

“How?”

A cruel laugh echoes off the stone walls, filling my stomach with anxiety. But I still have to know. “What’s so funny?”

“Funny? Oh, just your question… It really brings me back…” His lips pull back in a demented smile, showcasing cracked, rotting teeth and bleeding black gums. “I was the one to kill him.”

A bolt of lightning travels through my body, freezing time and gluing me to the spot. My dad… killed… Zairn killed him… I had always known my father had died before I was born, but the story was that he lost his life in a tragic car accident—never that he was murdered.

Either ignorant or indifferent to the war raging in my mind, Zairn continues his twisted tale, his grin growing more severe by the second. “I often have dreams about it, you know. The way he screamed as I sliced the flesh from his body. The way he pleaded as I plucked the feathers from his wings, and the sound when I tore them from his spine.” He takes a deep inhale, his eyes glossing over as if reliving the moment all over again. “It was a pity when he died. Too soon. Much too soon.” Zairn’s pupils dilate as he makes eye contact with me. “I should have done more. For his crimes against Lord Slaine, for siding with Abaddon—that Gylden filth—I should have made his death last months—no, years. I shall always have regrets about that.” He scoffs, lazily dragging his gaze down my frame. “To think you came from a Sable as powerful as Erik? Pathetic, truly. This is why mating with humans should have been outlawed long before. They are a food source and nothing else. Pretending otherwise only breeds weakness.”

With the barrage of new information, my mind is reeling, making it impossible to come up with a coherent response. Gylden? Sable? Feathered wings? My father… not just a demon, but one of great power? It seems too fantastical to believe.

Zairn leans in closer, his hot, putrid breath brushing my face with each of his labored breaths. Those milky white eyes seem to see through me in a way no one ever has before, and my blood roils with discomfort. “What?”

“Your eyes…” he whispers. “They’re just like your mother’s. The color of fresh shit—just like the flavor of her soul.”