“I took the papers and went to your father at once. He was still with Alethea, still cradling her on her deathbed as if she might yet wake.” He swallowed, and it was loud in the utter silence. “I told him we have to leave, now. I told him what I’d seen, what Ambrosine was planning. ‘She killed her,’ he said. He kept saying it over and over again. He blamed Ambrosine for her death, for making him bring Alethea to Culinnon, though he had made that decision as much as Ambrosine had. As much as Alethea had. I shook him then, hard, and made him look at the papers. ‘This is not what Alethea would have wanted,’ I told him. ‘Will you let her dying wish go unanswered? Will you leave her daughter with this woman?’

“That seemed to rouse him. We went to the nursery and got the two of you. I carried Agnes and he took you, Leo. He could barely look at either of you. But when we approached the dock where our ship was anchored, we discovered Misarros swarming it. We were trapped.”

“How did you escape?” Agnes asked.

“Ezra,” Eneas said, pursing his lips. “He wanted Xavier to take him to Kaolin, to get him as far from Culinnon as possible. She hates him, but he is technically a Byrne, so she couldn’t let him go. He led us to a small ship that I was able to sail by myself. I told Xavier, we cannot take Ezra with us. It wasn’t worth the risk. She would be furious enough when she discovered we had gone with the children; why add insult to injury. And personally, I had never liked Ezra, never trusted him. Xavier promised him, though—he promised him that once his children were safe, he would find a way to get Ezra out from under his mother’s thumb. And he did. It only took eighteen years.

“The mertags knew me and let our ship pass. We made it to a port where we could purchase berths on a larger ship that took us to Ithilia and from there back to Old Port City. It was a long, dark journey, but your father grew even darker over the course of it. The change in him was startling. He never held either of you again after that first night. I never heard him laugh the way he used to. He threatened me never to tell the two of you about Alethea or what life was like before you were born. And I knew his threats were real—he could send me back to Pelago without a second thought, and then I would never be able to see either of you again. I would have broken my promise to your mother, to make sure you both knew you were loved.”