I shook my head. “You’re lying.”

“My aunt was the midwife called in to assist at the birth.” His eyebrow arched up.

My mind reeled, trying to make sense of his claim, weighing it against the truth I’d staked so much upon. All I could muster was, “You’re trying to turn me against my father.”

“Isn’t that why you’re here?” he said. He gestured around us. “You’ve already betrayed your father.”

My hand twitched toward my sword as the rest of my body went stone cold. No. I hadn’t betrayed him—I’d been finding a way to impress him. I was going to show him the desert chose me. I was going to loosen Rodric’s hold over him and prove my worth because he and I were in this together. My father loved me. Didn’t he?

But then why had he chosen Rodric?

Cion’s eyes tracked the movement of my hand, but he made no move for his own sword. “My aunt had gone out to the balcony to dry some of the sheets used in childbirth. Through the curtain, she saw your father suffocate your mother before doing the same to your sister.” There was no deception in his voice, only pain. His eyes drifted toward the children at his feet. “I wasn’t a Desert Boy back then. I was just a child. But I saw the look on my aunt’s face when she rushed down from the palace. She still clutched the bloody sheets to her chest like she was holding on to the last shreds of her sanity. She hid in our house, afraid to speak about what she’d seen. My parents had sent me to bed, but I heard every word, every description of how the king had wrapped his hands around his wife’s neck and pressed his thumbs into the flesh of her throat as she lay weak and bleeding, unable to fight against him.

“I can still hear the sobs my aunt let out when she described the way your father smothered your sister. He picked her up like she was a snake that might bite him. I recall my aunt had run so quickly from the palace she’d made her bad foot worse. My aunt’s wails had lasted the entire night, but I never learned if they were from the pain in her foot or from what she’d seen. Because the next morning, she was gone. The Desert Boys had come in the night and spirited her away. For weeks afterward, the captain of the guard would harass my father, thinking he knew my aunt’s location. Eventually, one night, just as the Desert Boys had taken my aunt, the guards took my father. I never saw him again.”

“No.” My stomach tightened. I tried to swallow, but my throat was too dry. “You’re lying.” He had to be. My father wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t have done that.

“You can ask my aunt—my Bala—when we get back to the hideout. The woman you met your first day, that’s her. She came back to help Tania make the crossing in case she goes into labor. She’ll tell you . . .” Cion reached out to me.