“You knew.” She couldn’t comprehend it. “All your years as sovereign, you knew what was happening. And you let it continue.”

“Yes, I did.”

“How could you?” she demanded, voice breaking. “How could you just—this, and everything else? The raids—you destroyed entire villages, entire families, like it was nothing. Like they meant nothing at all to you. Like they were just—pieces on a chessboard.” She couldn’t look away from him, this person who for sixteen years had been her father, this person who had walked with her through the flower gardens and let her sit in his study and taught her about politics and economics and had never taken her seriously, not once, and had replaced her with another child the moment she defied him, this person with so much red blood on his hands. “You are everything that is wrong with this world,” she said. “You really are a monster.”

He regarded her. His face was completely blank, no trace of shame or anger or anything. Maybe a trace of pity. “I hope you realize this outburst is yet another example of your immaturity, daughter. There is no such thing as monsters. I am Automa. I am exactly like you. The only difference between us is our beliefs. Our choices.”

“You’re nothing like me.”

“Really? If a Scyre cut us open right at this moment, and laid bare our inner workings, we would be indistinguishable from each other. Everything you’re Made of, I am Made of as well. There is nothing inside you that is not also inside me.” He caught the look on her face. “Yes, I know about Scyre Kinok’s little trick. Midwife sabotage, was it? Someone tampering with your blueprints, some nonsense about a fifth pillar? Tell me, daughter, did it make you happy, thinking you were special?”

“No,” she said. “I was terrified. Because I thought my father would be ashamed of me.” She blinked and a single tear fell. “I am not afraid of that anymore. I just have one more question for you, Sovereign.” A question that had been burning inside of her ever since she’d learned Ayla’s story. “Were you there at . . . at the raid in a village called Delan?”

The lantern sputtered. Hesod’s eyes left Crier and it felt like a physical weight being stripped away, like invisible binds being severed. He opened the tiny glass door of the lantern and removed the candle in its metal bowl. It was almost entirely burned down, yellow flame drowning in the melted wax, clinging to the very last bit of wick. The trail of smoke had turned black and oily.

Hesod dipped one finger into the melted wax and held it up to catch the light of the wall sconces, watching as it cooled and hardened on his skin, turning from clear to ghostly white.

“I have been to many places,” he said. “I cannot possibly remember all of them.”

“You liar,” Crier spat. “Our Kind remembers everything. Delan, in the north. Seven years ago it was raided and burned to the ground. Were you there?”