He drew a ragged breath, and turned back toward Simi, Kody, and Nick. “And that’s why my wife and I had to keep our marriage a secret. Why we had to deny we ever had any kind of relationship at all, and why I had to let her go after only six months, to protect her from my enemies, including my own mother and father, who would have killed her to get back at me. They would never have left us in peace, never allowed her to retain her place of honor. Even though she would have never done anything to betray the Kalosum. None of them would have believed it. I couldn’t afford for anyone to know that she held my heart. That I even had one. Good or bad. Light or dark. It mattered not. Had anyone ever learned the truth, we would have been destroyed. Just as Caleb was for daring to hope for a better life with his Lilliana. Just as Adarian was for loving you and your mother. For hoping Cherise could somehow see something more in him besides the monster he’d been born. Like us, he was a pathetic moth dragged against his will to a sweet, vibrant light he couldn’t resist or understand. But one he knew he needed in order to live and feel warm.”

His gaze dropped to where Nick’s hand was wrapped around Kody’s. “They beguile us so with their precious ways. And for a moment’s worth of warmth in a lifetime of coldness, we are burned and extinguished. Pathetic creatures from our cradles to our graves.” He laughed bitterly. “We are ever helpless against them.”

For a full minute, Nick couldn’t breathe as those bitter, heartfelt words and their implication hit him hard. Could it possibly be true?

Could his mother truly be that innocent orphan who’d been conceived and sent by the Kalosum for no other purpose than to trap his father?

“Mennie? Tell me you didn’t do that to my mom.”

Closing her eyes, she turned her face away from him, letting him know that Xev was telling him the truth.

Shattered by the revelations, Nick stepped away from Kody and Simi to approach the woman who’d helped bring him into this world. A woman he’d thought he could always trust. One who’d always promised him that she would never lie or be dishonest.

Not for anything.

When everyone else had turned their back on him and his mom, Menyara had always been there for them. She’d said it was because taking them in like family and helping them was the right thing to do. That she couldn’t turn her back on them like everyone else and let them suffer. Not when they needed help.

But she’d left out some seriously vital details.