“He had nothing to offer me, he said. I told him he was overreacting, I loved him no matter what the circumstances may be. I told him I had faith in him. But Montpierre said that by the following week, at the end of the moonturn, his business would fold. He had no more money to pay the rent on his manufacturing workshop. He said he would not make me his wife until he could give me the life I deserved, and that I should find a man worthy of my beauty and kind soul.”

She paused to wipe at two tears trailing down her cheeks. “So the next day I sought out Guste Pain.”

Weysh let out a long exhale. “I see,” he said. It was a terrible situation, and his maman did the only thing she believed she could at the time.

“Foolishly, I thought it would be a one-time thing,” she continued. “It was not. He gave Montpierre his loan, but he also said that if I didn’t continue with him he would tell Montpierre I had thrown myself at him. He even kept one of my underthings as his so-called proof.”

Weysh shivered. Sometimes just knowing that psychopath’s blood ran through his veins made his skin crawl. “But, Maman, why didn’t you say something before he had the chance?”

She laughed, the sound bitter. “Weysh, you lovely thing. Who would you expect people would have believed? The golden son of a wealthy dragon family or the wife of a fledging businessman? The half-Islander wife of a fledgling business man? Even after your birth, when it was clear Guste must have participated willingly, there were those who disbelieved me, who grumbled that I had somehow sought to entrap him. They said I should have been happy with the Creshen I’d already managed to catch, but I was a greedy harlot who’d hoped for bigger game.” Her eyes glistened with angry tears. “I thought it would never end. Even when I became pregnant it didn’t occur to me that it could be Guste’s.”

Whether fact or folklore, it was thought to be practically impossible for a man who was dragonkind to impregnate any woman but his Given. Some scholars went so far as to say that dragonkind men could not impregnate anyone before they had found their Given, that her scent alone gave him that capability. Clearly, Weysh was proof of the contrary.

“Some days I relish that your birth beat the odds. It forced everyone to finally see Guste for what he is. Other days I wonder why it had to be me.”