Sick to his stomach, Nick was quickly learning that Livia had been right. Everyone in his life had lied badly to him. Menyara had kept much, much more from him than just the secret of his father and birth.

She’d hidden her real identity from them. Her real role in both their lives.

His gaze went to his mother and he felt as sick as Caleb had been at school.

How could Menyara do this to her? His mother had no idea she was adopted and had no idea who her real parents were. For that matter, he didn’t really know, other than her father was a Sephiroth. That knowledge would kill her. She’d never, ever believe him if he tried to tell her.

His head reeling, he scowled at Menyara. “Who’s my real grandmother?”

“It doesn’t matter. She died three days after she gave your mother up for adoption, in a car wreck. As did your real grandfather, supposedly in another wreck before the birth. It’s why the Gautiers never told her she was adopted. Why bother? With both birth parents dead, there was no reason to ever let Cherise know the truth. For all intents and purposes, the Gautiers are your grandparents. That’s all you and your mother ever need to know. The truth would only hurt her.”

Maybe, but he was leaning toward Xev with this. His mother had a right to know. And it explained why her parents had been so quick to toss her out when she’d become pregnant as a teenager. The fact that her parents had thrown her away like garbage had played a number on his mother’s head. If she knew they weren’t really her birth parents, that might make this better.

But then again, it might not. If she found out the truth, she’d have two sets of parents who’d given her up. That might be a lot worse in her mind.

Yeah, life was ever complicated. Ambrose had taught him that. And people didn’t always react the way you expected them to. As Acheron so often said, emotions didn’t have brains.

And right now, his emotions were all over the place and were definitely not thinking clearly as he tried to make sense of all this.

Which led him back to one other thing he wanted to clarify while Menyara felt the need to come clean with her lies. “Are you really the goddess Cam?”

She nodded.

Cam had been one of the original six primal gods who’d started the first great war of the immortals. A war that had almost ended the world and mankind. She and her siblings had been the ones who’d called for Nick’s race to be put down like rabid dogs. All except his one ancestor.

One cursed Malachai.

One cursed Sephiroth.