“I ought to have guessed you were simply being polite,” he said. “I’ll tell you my crime, then. Selfish of me, but I’ll feel better if there are no illusions for me to shatter.” He sobered. “We killed a minister. He wasn’t supposed to die. It was a robbery. We ran a . . . a scheme. With a woman my father . . . spent time with. She used to . . . entertain men.”

He cleared his throat. “That part isn’t important. The point is that we had a scheme for robbing rich men while they were . . . otherwise occupied. It had worked many times. This time, something went wrong. We were caught.”

He went quiet then, for so long that she thought that was the end of his story.

“No,” he continued. “I was caught. Things went wrong and I didn’t get out quickly enough, and my uncle . . . It doesn’t matter who killed the minister. We were all responsible. So we were all exiled.”

“Including your father?” she asked.

He nodded.

“So he perished in the forest?”

“He hung himself shortly after we arrived. He . . . was a man given to extremes. Life was wonderful or life was hopeless. Once we were abandoned in the forest, he gave up.”

And abandoned you. That’s what she thought, and the anger that flared in her gut had nothing to do with Ronan for his thievery or his uncle for killing the minister. His father had committed the worst crime. He had brought his son into that life, and when things went wrong, he abandoned him in the Forest of the Dead. Ronan might joke that he was selfish, but that was true selfishness.

As she judged Ronan’s father, she was well aware that her mother had also taken her own life. But it was not the same. It could not be less the same.

When Ashyn and Moria were born, their mother had kept their twin birth a secret for a very good reason. Because when the girls were discovered, their local governor would inform his warlord. The warlord would tell the marshal, who would, as soon as possible, dispatch a nursing Hound of the Immortals and nursing Wildcat of the Immortals.

This great hound and wildcat would be deprived of food from the moment they left their kennels. When they reached the twins’ village, the babies would be placed in a room. The starving beasts would be put in with them at dawn. The door would be closed and not reopened until dusk, no matter what terrible sounds emanated from within.

If the babes were truly a Seeker and Keeper, they would be found nestled with the beasts, suckling, the Seeker with the hound and the Keeper with the wildcat. Then they would be given the best pup and kitten from the hound’s and wildcat’s litters, as their bond-beasts, and the family would be transported with much pomp and circumstance to their future post.