“Give me something, Everest.” I stared at him, trying to be strong even as my whole body began to tremble. “Tell me how you would feel if you heard me tell another man that I wouldn’t die to save you, that his life meant more to me than yours did. Tell me how you’d feel if you saw me hold another man the way you held her, let him kiss my forehead. Tell me how it would feel to hear me tell another man, not my soulmate, that the only life I’d sacrifice my own for was his and that I did not want to live if he died. Tell me, Everest⁠—”

“It would break me,” he said softly.

I nodded. “Well, this is me breaking, Everest. I think I deserve to know this one answer. I deserve to know why you are choosing her over me.”

He stared at me. I watched emotions swim across his gaze even while I could not identify them. “Okay,” he whispered.

I flinched. “Okay, what?”

“You’re right. You deserve this answer. I am sorry my magic is so weakened that I did not sense you around or I never would have allowed you to hear what you did . . . because without context, without history . . . what you heard is heartbreaking.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. When he dropped them, his face was flushed and his eyes red like he was also losing his battle with his emotions. “And I appreciate you giving me the chance to explain, to give you that context, because I swear it is not what you think.”

“Then what is it? You just told me you love her, so if she’s not⁠—”

“She’s my daughter,” he whispered.

I gasped. My pulse thundered through my ears. Surely I’d heard that wrong. “What did you just say?”

He pushed both hands through his long white hair with his eyes closed. He took a deep breath, then opened his eyes and met my wide stare. “Saber is my daughter. Biologically. I conceived her. She was born as an infant. As you were.”

I opened my mouth, yet nothing came out.

“She was born in the year one thousand, just months after Sweyn.” He pushed to his feet and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Perhaps if we had known Sweyn had been conceived, we would have waited, but Saber was already coming.”

“She’s your daughter,” I heard myself say. When he nodded, I frowned. “Her mother?”

He opened his mouth, then shut it. Then he grimaced and looked to the ground. “. . . Was my wife.”

Wife. WIFE. He has a wife?

“My wife died a long, long time ago,” he whispered with a rough voice, like speaking of it hurt him physically. “In case you were wondering.”