Cold washed over me. My mind served up a memory: the man I called my father in a bed, his stomach ripped open. A phantom odor, putrid, thick, and bitter, filled my nostrils. It had haunted me through the years in my sleep.

I turned.

The man sitting on the throne was no longer relaxed. The arrogance and the good-natured mirth had vanished. A somber remorse remained, mixed with a resignation born from old grief.

“Do you want a medal?”

“I didn’t plan to do it,” Hugh said. “I expected it would eventually come to that since Roland wanted him dead, but that day I didn’t come to fight. I wanted to talk. I wanted to know why he’d left me. He was like a father to me. I went on an errand for a few months, and when I returned, he was gone and Roland told me to kill him. I never understood why.”

I knew why. “Took you a while to track him down.”

“Sixteen years. He lived in this small house in Georgia. I walked up to it. He met me on the porch, sword out.” Old unresolved anger sharpened his voice. “He said, ‘Let’s see what you’ve learned.’ Those were the last words he ever said to me. He’d raised me since I was seven, and then left without a word. No explanation. Nothing. I looked for him for sixteen years. He was like a father to me, and that’s what I got. ‘Let’s see what you’ve learned.’”

I should’ve been furious, but for some reason I wasn’t. Maybe because I knew he was telling the truth. Maybe because Voron left me just like that, without the much-needed explanations. Maybe because things I had learned about him since his death had made me doubt everything he’d ever said to me. Whatever the case, I felt only a hollow, crushing sadness.

How touching. I understood my adoptive father’s killer. Maybe after this was over, Hugh’s head and I could sing “Kumbaya” together by the fire.

He was waiting. This was an awful lot of sharing. Voron had always warned me that Hugh was smart. He planned strategies for fun. This conversation was a part of some sort of plan. He had to have an angle, but what was the angle? Was he trying to see how easily I could be provoked? Hearing him talk about Voron was like ripping an old wound open with a rusty nail, but Voron would tell me to get over it. Hugh wanted to talk. Fine. I’d use it against him.

“How did you kill him?” There. Nice and neutral.

Hugh shrugged. “He was slower than I remembered.”

“Too many years away from Roland.” Without frequent exposure to my father’s magic, Voron’s rejuvenation had slowed down.