But the second half, which detailed how to create the bond… that Zofi hadn’t understood until now.

There is only one way to unite two people. To make two people into one, Mother wrote, and in those words, Zofi heard the echo of what Mother always told her, growing up. Any time Zofi asked why she didn’t have any siblings, like the other Traveler children.

“Because,” Mother had said, “you need to be careful who you share your blood with. It’s a powerful bond, a tether that can never be cut. I’ve only met one man who I trusted to share that with.” She’d usually pinched Zofi’s cheek at that point. “Who I trusted you with.”

In a child, the book continued, two separate people become a single bloodstream.

If two people wish to bind their minds, they must tithe for this purpose while they produce a child together.

A child.

Bile rose in the back of Zofi’s throat. She sat back against the tree and stared at the night forest. Tried desperately to breathe in the fresh air, the scent of the earth beneath her.

It didn’t help. The trees went blurry, seemed to spin around her, dizzy with disgust.

Andros and Yasmin had a child together.

A child born of incest. From a brother and sister… Zofi thought about her sisters and felt sick. She couldn’t imagine crossing that line. Perverting familial bonds like that.

She knew royalty did things differently than normal people. She’d heard of distant cousins marrying, in cases where no other “noble enough” matches could be found. But a union like this wouldn’t just go against custom. This went against the law, too.

In the Reaches, where bloodlines determined who you could trust, incest among close relations was seen as a perversion of the gods’ gifts. Children born from such unions were often sickly, or mad, or died young of minor diseases.

Zofi thought she’d begun to know her father. But the fact that he would do this…

I have another half sibling out there.

A shiver ran along her spine. She understood all too well now what her mother meant about being careful who you shared blood with. Yet, careful as she claimed to have been, Mother had tied her bloodline to the worst possible option.

Zofi thought about Nicolen’s viciousness. She thought about the bloodthirsty heir. Sands, even Zofi’s crime and her sisters’. Were they any better?

Now Yasmin and Andros, too. The twins were willing to flout every law in the land, and for what? To bind their minds. How could that possibly be worth bringing such a child into the world, a child whose origins they’d need to disguise, a child who might be ill or suffer greatly.

It wasn’t just dangerous. It was selfish.

Head throbbing, Zofi continued to read with difficulty.