Dread filled the pit of my stomach as I read the words. Her blood, mixed with the ashes burned from witstone and his blood, made the liquid I’d drank to experience my father’s past. My father had told me he’d burned his wife’s body before he’d made these discoveries. What, then, had he burned to create the memories he’d stuffed into my body? I flipped the pages, searching for an explanation.

I found instead the description of how he’d made me.

Pieces gathered from various citizens he’d kidnapped, pieces that resembled my mother. A nose here, a pair of eyes there, the arms of some hapless young woman from Deerhead. All sewn together and placed into the pool to heal and grow.

I shut the book tight and had to stop myself from throwing it across the room. It made me want to claw my own skin from my bones. I couldn’t help what my father had done to create me. I had to remind myself of that.

Thrana padded over and laid her heavy head in my lap. I rubbed the soft fur of her cheeks. “Where did you come from? Why did my father capture you?”

She began to shake. “Dark place,” she said. “He made me stay in the dark place. He hurt me.”

“I know.” I kept my voice low, soothing. “And that will never happen to you again. I promise.”

She huffed out a breath, her shoulders still shaking. I waited, stroking her forehead, sensing she would speak if I just let her.

“I came from the dark place. But I was looking for light. I found the door and then your father found me. He put me in a cage. And then he put me back in the water and there was pain.”

I’d thought I could never really hate my father, no matter what he’d done to me. Now I found this was not true. Thrana had been helpless, a creature seeking love and care, and he’d given her suffering. I cradled her head in my hands, bringing her up to look me in the eye. “I will always take care of you.”

“I know,” she said with a sigh.

By the time dinner had arrived, Jovis had still not shown up, and the intermittent flashes of anger I’d felt at him before turned into a torrential lightning storm. What could possibly be keeping him? Was this his petty way of getting back at me for sending him away?

Ranami came to fetch me, peering into my room as if looking for someone. “Your Captain of the Imperial Guard? I knocked on his door but no one answered, Eminence.”

“I sent him on a task,” I lied. “He may join us later.”