“It does,” Elena said, almost defensively. “His blood may be tainted, but the pure blood of Hanalea is much stronger.” She paused, biting her lower lip. “We had no choice. Alyssa was her only issue. Since then, the demon’s blood has been diluted many times.”

Well. No wonder that story was kept quiet. If it was true. The dynasty of queens was founded on a lie.

“What about the boy?” Han asked.

Lucius laughed softly. “The boy was a problem, because there was no doubt he was gifted. Word went out to the few who knew about it that the baby died shortly after birth and was buried in an unmarked grave. But I happen to know that the baby lived.”

“Why would they let it live?” Han asked. After everything the demon had done, weren’t they worried that the son would go bad too?

“The Demonai warriors meant to kill him. They handed him to a clan matriarch and told her to drop him off a high cliff. It was seen as a great honor for the matriarch, at the time.”

Instinctively, Han glanced at Elena. She was leaning forward, her face set in hard, defiant lines.

Lucius turned back toward Han as if he could sense his location in the room. “But Hanalea intervened. Dressed as a trader, she came to the matriarch and offered a trade. She offered to give up her child forever in exchange for sparing his life.”

An image suddenly came to Han—of a marble statue in the Southbridge Temple garden. It was an old piece, worn down by weather. Jemson said it was made around the time of the Breaking, and had been carried there from somewhere else. It was an image of Hanalea in trader garb—an unusual presentation. The warrior queen cradled a baby in one arm and wielded a sword in the other, fending off an unseen attacker. It was called, Hanalea Defending the Children. It never occurred to Han that the scene was more than symbolic, that it might depict a real event.

Lucius continued his story. “The clan couldn’t say no to Hanalea, especially after all she’d done, all she’d been through. Yet the matriarch did not wish to turn the boy loose in the world, to grow up unsupervised. So a very small, very secret council was convened to determine what to do.”

Thoughts swirled through Han’s head. Here it was, another story that contradicted everything he’d heard before. Who knew what to believe anymore? He looked at Dancer to assess his reaction. His friend sat, transfixed, absently toying with the fringes on his leggings. Dancer had never heard Lucius tell a story, had never seen how he could draw a person in.

“How do you know all this?” Han asked, meaning, Where’d you get this story? Did you find it at the bottom of a bottle of product?

“I was the one that married Hanalea after Alger died,” Lucius said.