No bruise or cut I’d received in the arena hurt more than this realization. And the more I thought about it, the more Cion’s words took hold in my mind.

How could the Desert Boys have gotten into the palace unseen? Why weren’t any guards hurt in the attack? Why would they only kill a woman and her child?

I sat down by the makeshift cribs as the certainty of it rushed through me. My stomach leapt into my throat. I fought to keep from throwing up.

I looked up at Cion.

How could I have been so blind? How could I have not seen what had been right in front of me?

I hadn’t wanted to. I trusted my father. I was going to make him proud because it was up to me to replace everything we’d lost.

But only I had lost something, something my father had taken from me.

And this whole time I’d thought Rodric was poisoning my father against me. But he didn’t have to. My father already had that venom inside him. He was just better at concealing it.

“I didn’t know,” I finally said to Cion. Tears slid down my cheeks from some reserve I didn’t know I had. I tried to wipe them away before Cion saw.

His knelt down in front of me and gently clasped my chin, turning my gaze toward him. “We Desert Boys have a saying about tears,” he said. “We say that crying is good, natural. It’s returning the water you’ve taken from the earth.”

I turned away. “Emotions make you weak, and the weak don’t survive.”

“Is that something your father taught you too?”

I nodded, not trusting my voice. Not trusting anything anymore.

Cion shook his head. “It is our emotions that give us strength. They are what drive us to make ourselves stronger.”

I prayed he was right, because a storm of emotions was blowing through me. Disbelief. Anger. Hatred. They spun around and around, each fighting to overpower the other.

“Stay here,” he said softly. “I’ll come back for you after the raid. It’ll give you time to think about things. I’ll have Insa check in on you.” He rose to leave.

Too numb to respond, I stared down at the tiny baby next to me. It still hadn’t woken up. Maybe it never would. Maybe it would die like everyone else. Like Yeri. Like my mother. Like my sister.

Unless I helped it.

Unless I changed everything.

I may not have been able to save my mother and sister, but I could save these children. This was no longer about having made that promise to my mother. It was what I wanted, what I needed to do.

“Wait,” I called out to Cion.

He turned back, one hand on the curtain to the next room.

I wiped away the last of my tears. I would shed no more for my father.

I was done being left behind and kept out of decisions by the man who killed my mother. I didn’t want his strength anymore. It was time I found my own.