“Will it?” I met her gaze, challenging her, and Anaïs looked away first.

“He played us all like a game of Guerre,” I said. “Because he knows better than we do ourselves what we want. How we will react. What we fear. Who we love.”

It seemed so obvious now, looking back. My father had known how Marc had felt about me long before I had. But more than that, he’d known that Marc would risk everything to save my life. I understood now why my father believed Marc the sympathizer leader when all his contemporaries believed him mad for thinking it. They saw a shy quiet boy who kept to the shadows, but my father saw a young man equally possessed of bravery and selflessness. And he’d exploited those attributes.

He’d seen through me just as clearly, but it had been my weaknesses he’d used to his advantage.

“I wanted a chance at life. A chance for love. A chance to believe that my affliction did not define me.” A fat tear rolled down my cheek, salty where it came to rest on my lips. “And Father manipulated those small wishes to achieve the worst possible of ends. Don’t for a moment think that he won’t do the same to you if it helps him get what he wants.”

“He can’t touch me,” she said, but there was a faint quiver in her voice. “My magic is more powerful than his.”

I gripped her hand, pushing as much urgency as I could into my voice. “What in all of this has he accomplished with magic?”

That was very nearly the worst of it – my father was guilty of everything, and yet guilty of nothing. As he’d so eloquently said himself, I’d done the work for him. We all had.

My sister went very still. “I’ll kill him.”

“Killing him will change nothing.” It was getting harder to find the strength to speak, but the last thing I wanted was her going after our father. He’d be prepared for that, and while my sister had sheer power, our father had a lifetime of experience, never mind the consequences she’d face for breaking the law if she succeeded. “It certainly won’t bring me back from the dead.”

A sob tore violently from her throat. “You’re not going to die. You’ll get well, you always do.”

“Not this time.” I’d come to terms with that already. The bleeding wasn’t stopping. It hadn’t even slowed. And there was a limit to what my body could endure.

“You don’t know that.” In a flurry of motion, she sat upright. “You need to fight, Penny. Fight to live and fight against Father’s manipulations. Because if you die, he wins.”

That was certainly what he thought. But he was wrong if he believed the inevitability of my death had rendered me powerless. I would keep fighting until the end, and when the end came, I’d give my father’s enemies the one thing they needed most to keep fighting. And they would win – I had faith in that. “Anaïs, there’s something I need you to do for me.”