My eyes widened. Foot stilling, I took my coat off. This might take a while to get to my dad. Trent met my gaze, and seeing my acceptance of this roundabout way, he eased back in a squeak of leather. Quen made a pained sound deep in his throat.

“The demons saw their end coming,” Trent said softly. “In an unusual effort of cooperation, they set aside their internal squabblings for supremacy and worked to twist a curse upon all of us. We didn’t even realize it had happened for almost three generations, not recognizing the higher fatality percentage of our newborn for what it was.”

I blinked. The demons were responsible for the elves’ failure? I thought it had been their habit of hybridizing with humans.

“Infant mortality increased exponentially each generation,” Trent said. “Our tenuous grip on victory slipped from us in tiny coffins and the sound of mourning. Eventually we realized they had twisted a curse on us, changing our DNA so that it spontaneously broke, each generation becoming progressively worse.”

My stomach roiled. Genetic genocide. “You tried to repair the damage by hybridizing with humans?” I asked, hearing the smallness of my voice.

His eyes flicked from the window to me. “That was a last ditch effort to save something until a way could be developed to fix it. It was ultimately a disaster, but it did keep us alive until we improved the genetic techniques to arrest and ultimately repair most of the degradation. When the Turn made it illegal, the labs went underground, desperate to save the few of us who managed to survive. The Turn scattered us, and I find a confused child about every other year.”

Feeling unreal, I whispered, “Your hospitals and orphanages.” I had never guessed there was a motive other than public relations behind them.

Trent smiled faintly upon seeing the understanding in my eyes. Quen looked positively ill, his wrinkles sliding into each other, his hands behind his back, staring at nothing in a silent protest. Trent eased forward again. “I find them sickly and dying, and they’re always grateful for their health and the chance to seek out more of their kin. It’s been a thin line the last fifty years. We’re balanced. This next generation will save or damn us.”

The thought of Ceri intruded, squelched. “What does this have to do with my dad?”

A quick nod bobbed his head. “Your father was working with mine trying to find an old sample of elven DNA in the ever-after that we could use as a pattern. We can fix what we know is wrong, but to make it better, to bring the infant mortality down to where we can survive without medical help, we needed a sample from someone that died before the curse was twisted. Something that we can pattern the repairs upon.”

A sound of disbelief escaped me. “You need a sample over two thousand years old?”