Bitterlich blinked and stared at the name. “But that’s the book where you track all of Kantelvar’s breeding experiments…” His expression drooped into shock. “You mean…”

Isabelle held up the blood cipher with his name on it. “I never took a sample of your blood. We knew who your parents were, so there was never any point, but here you are.”

“So I was part of the breeding program. And he labeled me a cull.” For the second time that day, Bitterlich looked ready to faint. “My parents. Wolfgang’s raid on my house. He was trying to kill me.”

Isabelle hadn’t made that leap. “We can’t know that. There was a lot of unrest at the time—”

“But Grand Leon sent Djordji to rescue me in particular with instructions not to let the Temple get their hands on me. He must have known. He must have had some idea of what Kantelvar was up to, trying to breed the Savior. He saved me.”

Isabelle’s heart wallowed under the weight of dismay. “Then, against all normal protocol, Grand Leon assigned you to protect me, who Kantelvar meant to bear the Savior. He said he hoped that we would get along.”

Bitterlich said, “He was trying to breed the Savior on the sly. That’s insane, it’s—”

“Exactly the sort of underhanded yet grandiose thing he would do,” Isabelle said. “Grand Leon really did want to make l’Empire Céleste a place where all different types of sorcerers could live together, and what better way to do that than crafting a child in possession of all the sorceries, and then naming that child as his heir: the Savior as king. That’s why he never named an heir, but said he had one in mind. At the same time he knew I’d never go along with it, so he put us together to see what would happen, but he didn’t know about your disability—”

“Wait, he can’t have been planning this all along,” Bitterlich protested. “My parents were killed more than twenty years ago. You nearly married Príncipe Julio.”

“Yes, and he tried to trick me into giving up my potential children from that marriage too,” Isabelle said, frowning. “The bastard. The point is, I don’t suggest that putting us together and hoping we’d fall into bed was his only plan. He had lots of schemes going. He knew most of them would never amount to anything, but once he saw the chance to put us together, it was at very low cost to him with a small chance at a very large reward.”

They both fell silent, digesting the totality of this revelation.

Bitterlich said very softly, “I’m glad he threw us together.”

A band of tension released from around Isabelle’s heart. “So am I.”