“I had a few suspicions I wanted to check out before I talked to you about them.” Elof sat next to me at the island, his arms folded on the cold marble. “I don’t want to get your hopes up, so I looked into a few things behind your back.”

“Behind my back?” I asked nervously.

“Yes, but it’s not as illicit as it sounds,” he said quickly.

“Just spit it out, Elof,” Dagny groaned in frustration. “This is torture.”

My heart pounded so hard, they could probably hear it. “What is going on?”

“Elof knows who your father is,” Dagny blurted out.

35

Revelations

Elof glared at her from across the island, his nostrils flaring slightly. “That isn’t exactly true.”

“What is true then?” I asked.

He took a deep breath and looked at me with soft dark eyes. “When we were summoned to the Omte palace, I took the opportunity to procure a few hairs from Crown Prince Furston Elak.”

“Why would you do that?” I asked.

“For comparison familial testing, the way I did with Bekk’s baby and Bryn,” Elof elaborated. “Against the sample I had just taken from you.” He paused. “Ulla, Furston is your half-brother.”

“What?” I shook my head. “Bodil is my mother?”

“We considered that possibility,” he replied carefully. “But your sample did have markers that led me to believe one of your parents is álfar. I cannot say for certain that an álfar man did not impregnate Bodil in secret. Her fiancé was gone much of the year before your birth, so she had the opportunity, I presume.

“But then, that holds even more true for her husband-to-be,” he went on. “Thor went on a mission that brought him to the First City, where the álfar Senka visited Sarina and other Älvolk. And then, Orra Fågel, who had been sent to Áibmoráigi to help Thor, is last seen in Iskyla, leaving behind a newborn baby.

“Thor was betrothed to Bodil in a marriage arranged by his father,” he explained. “Indu was in a relationship with Senka when she fell pregnant, which is why he believed himself to be your father.”

Elof paused, giving me a minute to absorb everything he was telling me. “Senka’s relationship involved a controlling zealot, Thor’s marriage was a political alliance, and they’re both in the same obscure location at the same time leading up to your birth.”

“They had the means and motive to hide their love child,” Dagny said.

“And with good reason, since Indu killed Orra for taking you,” Elof said.

“The Omte King is my father?” I asked, my voice hardly even a whisper.

Dagny nodded. “We think so, yes.”

“Okay,” I said, and then I ran and threw up in the sink.