by Jasmine Walt
28
I tried to do as Iannis asked and keep out of trouble, but I found myself bored within minutes. The rest of our delegation easily fit into the international crowd, practiced at conversing with other politicians, but I wasn’t quite so polished. Besides, Iannis had warned me against allowing members of the other delegations to lure me into spilling secrets, so I was hesitant to talk too much to the other guests for fear that I might accidentally reveal something I shouldn’t. Quite a few tried to engage me in conversation, but when it was clear that I would only make small talk, they quickly gave up and moved onto better, more inebriated targets.
Just as I was considering the idea of slipping out early, I saw Isana on the other side of the room. She wore midnight blue today, and her black tresses were pulled back from her head and styled artfully, revealing the gemstones that dangled from her ears. She was in deep conversation with a Sandian delegate, and I approached from the side, waiting until the man had disappeared before making my move.
“Hello, Miss ar’Rhea,” I said, and she jerked as I appeared before her. I grabbed a glass of wine from a passing servant and offered it to her. “Care for a drink?”
“Thank you.” She took the glass gingerly, a hesitant smile on her lips. “Usually it’s the men who ply me with these,” she joked, taking a small sip.
“Big surprise.” I settled onto the low couch she was perched on, draping one arm over the back. “How have you found your stay in Garai?”
“Very pleasant,” Isana said. “This is my first time visiting, and I find the culture fascinating in its strangeness. What about you?”
“Oh, I think it’s lovely,” I agreed. “But I’ve been having trouble sleeping ever since that assassination attempt.”
Isana’s eyes widened. “Oh yes, I remember hearing about that. Someone mentioned you were wounded. Did the attacker do any lasting damage?”
“No,” I said, keeping my expression carefully blank. Isana sounded sincere, but her scent told a different story—she was nervous. “I’m a shifter, and I heal easily from most wounds.”
“I am happy to hear that,” she said. This time, I could smell the lie.
“I’m not sure you are.” I allowed my eyes to narrow, watching with satisfaction as Isana’s sun-kissed skin paled. “Did you know that shifters can smell lies, Isana?”
“N-no,” she stuttered, her face blank even as her scent grew sour with fear. “We have no shifters in Castalis.”
“Ah, yes, that’s right,” I said, as though I’d forgotten. “I’ve heard that Castalians are rather prejudiced against them. Makes me wonder whether your family was the one who targeted me.”
“I resent that implication,” Isana said stiffly, her green eyes flashing. “I am sorry that you were attacked, Miss Baine, but I do not know who assaulted you, and I don’t appreciate you fingering my family for the blame. Your poor manners and unreasonable paranoia no doubt make you lots of enemies, wherever you go.”
Her cheeks grew pink with genuine fury, but underneath that, she was still nervous. What was she hiding?
“Isana?” Haman called before I could probe further. I tore my gaze away from my half-sibling to see him approaching our little corner. Malik was at his side, and while Haman’s face was drawn with concern, Malik’s green eyes glittered with anger, echoing his sister’s.
Haman came to a stop before us, his gaze shifting back and forth between Isana and me. Those green eyes, identical in color to mine, lingered on mine for a long moment, and I held my breath. Did he suspect the truth?
“Is everything all right?” he finally asked, turning back to Isana.
“Of course.” Isana let out a breath, then smiled at her father. “Miss Baine and I were having a spirited conversation is all.”
I arched a brow at that. Why would Isana lie to her father about what we’d been discussing? Wouldn’t it behoove her to tell her father about my accusation?
“Very well,” Haman said, though he didn’t look like he believed her. “Miss Baine, would you mind letting me borrow you for a few minutes? I’d like to speak privately, just the two of us.”
“Borrow me?” I repeated, excitement and fear bubbling up inside me all at once. Was he going to acknowledge our relationship? But if so, why would he not invite his son and daughter?
“Yes.” He held out his arm to me. “I need to speak to you privately.”
What if he’s planning to kill you?
I scanned the crowd quickly, looking for Iannis, but he was nowhere to be found. For a split second, I considered calling out to him via mindspeak and asking him what I should do.
No, I scolded myself. In the end, this was my demon to face and mine alone. I couldn’t rely on Iannis to tell me how to handle every situation—that would only encourage his overprotective instincts. If I asked, he would insist that I not to go anywhere alone with Haman. But my own instincts told me to accept Haman’s offer, and they rarely failed me. Looking into my father’s eyes, that bottle-green color so familiar, I could detect no malice or fear. And though his scent betrayed his nerves, I did not sense that he feared or distrusted me, as Isana did.
“Very well,” I said, taking his offered his arm. “Please lead the way.”
“I know that you are my daughter,” Haman said as we sat down on a stone bench next to a koi pond in the Palace Gardens. A gingko tree extended its branches over us, hiding us from the waning moon and anyone who might look this way from a distance. “The moment I laid eyes on you, I knew in my heart. But I had to investigate, had to make absolutely certain, before approaching you about it.”
“I guess that must have been an unpleasant surprise, given the way your country feels about shifters.” I kept my voice even, as though my heart wasn’t hammering against my chest, as though my palms weren’t sweaty against the cool stone of the bench beneath me. As though the words I spoke didn’t coat my tongue with bitterness.
“By the Lady, no.” Haman sighed. “I feel guilty, mostly, but also amazed. If I ever shared that stupid prejudice against shifters, meeting your mother, Saranella, would have cured me of it. I adored her.”
“Is that so?” I couldn’t keep the scathing note out of my voice. “Is that why you left her without a backward glance? Without even telling her who you were?”
“I had no choice.” His voice was pained now. “I could not stay with her, much as I wanted to. I was bound by duty and obligation. I still am.”
I wanted to snort in derision, but decided to hear him out first. “That doesn’t make me feel a whole lot better.” I paused, then added, “I used to hate you, you know. Even though I didn’t know who you were for most of my life.”
“I’m not surprised…” He trailed off, then turned to face me. There was sadness in the lines of his face, but curiosity gleamed in his eyes as he regarded me. “How did you find out about me? Did Saranella tell you before she passed away?”
“No,” I said quietly, a pang of sadness hitting me as my mother’s face swam into my mind’s eye. “I tracked down your old master, Ballos, after finding out that my mother had gone to him for information about you all those years ago.”
“Ah.” His face softened with something like nostalgia. “How is the old fellow?”
“He’s a cantankerous bastard,” I said, and, to my surprise, Haman’s lips twitched. “But I guess you already knew that.”
“Master Ballos is… eccentric,” Haman allowed. “But very knowledgeable nonetheless. I learned much from him during my stay in Solantha.”
“When you weren’t gallivanting about with my mother.” Haman grew silent, and I shifted as the tension grew between us. “How did it happen?” I finally asked the question I’d been dying to know the answer to. “How did the two of you meet?”
Haman let out a heavy sigh. “I guess I owe you an explanation, no matter how painful and unflattering it might be to me.” He ran a hand over his face. “When I met your mother, I was at loose ends. Ballos was a good teacher, but I swiftly
grew bored of his pedantry, and I was missing my family. To relieve my frustration, I decided to explore the city in human guise, practicing my skills. I ended up at a small concert in Rowanville, and that was how I met Saranella.”
His eyes lit up, and my throat tightened at the transformed look on his face. “She was unlike anyone I’d ever met before. Gorgeous, passionate, with a fine sense of humor…. She lived her life to the fullest, and her infectious energy never failed to rub off on me. Being around her was like an addiction. Perhaps all shifters are the way she was—I had never spent time with one before. But I could never get enough.”
“We shifters are a passionate race,” I said, smiling despite the strangeness of this conversation. “But there was no one quite like my mother.”
“No, I imagine not.” Haman was silent for a moment. “I adored her, and she was fond of me too, but I could never show her my true face. I regretted that most, after it was all over. That she would never know who I truly was.”
“So the two of you clicked, and you had a hot affair,” I summed up, trying to pretend as if it wasn’t a big deal. “And then you left when you realized there could be nothing more between you.”
“Yes,” Haman said simply. “We should not have ‘clicked’ as you say. I was already promised to someone else, and we were from two different races. But I could not help myself, and I found myself thinking of her at all hours, even when I was supposed to be focusing on my studies. I spent my nights staring up at my bedroom ceiling in Ballos’s house, forming mad schemes to leave my country and heritage behind… but none of them would have worked.”
“No, I guess not.” I swallowed against a sudden lump in my throat. Hearing Haman’s story made me realize just how precious my relationship with Iannis was. Most people in my situation didn’t end up with the love of their life. Too often they had to abandon their dreams and deal with reality, as my father had done. “Still, I’m not sure why you didn’t reveal the truth to her before you left.”
Haman shifted uncomfortably on the bench. “One night, not long before I broke things off with her, Saranella and I had a discussion about magic. I found out that she hated it with a passion, and harbored unbridled resentment toward the mage community for what she called the oppression of her kind. I knew then that things would never work out between us, which was why I left without saying anything. She would have never forgiven my deception.”
“We’ll never know that for sure,” I couldn’t help but point out, even though I knew it was digging salt in the wound. “You never gave her a chance.”
“No. But even had I stayed there, I would have always felt guilty for abandoning my heritage, my betrothed. The shadow of my betrayal would have forever darkened our door and ruined our happiness. So I moved on with my life, and she moved on with hers.”
I said nothing to that. What could I possibly add? In the end, Haman had made the right choice. He had gone back to his home, his family, and had married the woman who had been lined up for him. He had a beautiful family, a beautiful wife, and an entire kingdom.
He hadn’t known that he had me, too.
“Even so,” Haman went on. “When Ballos wrote years later that Saranella had died, all those old feelings came rushing back as though it had been yesterday. The pain of her loss was indescribable, and to make matters worse, I could not tell anybody about it.” His eyes gleamed with grief for a few moments, and then his brows drew together in a scowl. “I don’t understand why Ballos didn’t tell me about you in the letter.”
“He felt you were better off not knowing,” I explained, feeling a little sorry for him now. His absence in my life had truly not been his fault. “He made my mother promise not to contact you. In exchange, he bound my magic so I could attempt to live as a shifter.” Not that that had worked out, I added silently.
“I can see the logic, but even so, Ballos had no right to keep your existence from me.” Haman’s eyes burned—he was clearly incensed at the old mage’s deception. But then his broad shoulders sagged, and he dropped his gaze back to the shimmering pond. “I suppose I only have myself to blame, though. You have every right to hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.” My throat was tight as I said the words, and I meant every single one. It was clear that he’d loved my mother, whatever his faults, and that he hadn’t meant to abandon me. “Maybe I did when I was younger, but I don’t now.”
“It means very much for me to hear you say that.” Haman met my gaze again, gratitude in his eyes. “You look so much like Saranella,” he said wonderingly, lifting his hand. His fingers brushed against my cheekbone for just a moment, then fell away. “Your faces are nearly identical, though you have my coloring. It’s like a miracle.”
“I’ve got your mouth, I think,” I said, smiling. By Magorah, but was this really happening? Was I really having a conversation with my father, as his daughter and not a stranger?
“And my eyes,” he said. “Although, it is strange to see them as shifter eyes instead of human.”
I tore my gaze from him at that, staring hard at the pond. The moonlight glowed against the still water, making it hard to see the fish that swam beneath, but every so often, I caught a flash of color from a fin.
“I did not mean offense,” Haman said quietly after a long moment of silence. “I brought you out here to tell you that I am sorry I never knew of you, and that I wasn’t able to have any role in your upbringing.”
“Would it matter if you had known?” I asked. “Given your country’s laws and customs, wouldn’t you have been forced to hide my existence anyway?”
Haman hesitated. “It would have been difficult, under the circumstances, for me to care for you properly,” he conceded. “But somehow, I would have found a way.”
He spoke with such sincerity that for a moment, I almost believed him. But those were just feelings talking, I reminded myself. He might believe that he could have found a way, but whether he could have actually done so was another matter. Maybe it was just as well that he’d never had to try—the heartbreak would have been unbearable.
“So, what now?” I asked. “Now that the facts are established, and we’ve both said our piece, do we just part ways here and pretend this meeting never happened?” My stomach dropped at the thought. It felt wrong to end things like that with my father, even if Iannis might advise it.
“That might be the logical thing to do, but I don’t want that,” Haman said, sounding a little offended. “I did not approach you so that I could tell you to forget me. I shall write to you, like a friend, now that I know of your existence, and it is up to you whether you want to reply, or visit, once you are married. I wish I could offer more, but it would be folly for either of us to publicly claim our relationship, at least not until I have stepped down from office as High Mage, and Malik takes over.”
“That’s probably gonna be a couple of hundred years, huh?” I said, and a weight slipped off my shoulders. There was zero chance that he would try to call off my wedding, not if he wanted to keep his position.
“Perhaps not,” Haman said ruefully. “Being a High Mage is not as much fun as some people think, and I don’t plan to cling to the office forever. It could be as soon as a few decades, depending on whether Malik is ready. He has much growing up to do. In any case, you have nothing to fear from me regarding your engagement to Lord Iannis. I will not interfere in any way, and neither will my family. None of them know about you.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” I said. “Just a few days before I left for Garai, I received a letter from Isana suggesting that we might be related. She wrote that she’d seen my picture in a magazine and noted the resemblance. And then she went on to say that she really admired what I’d accomplished as a hybrid, and that she wanted to meet me.”
“Really?” Haman looked taken aback. “That sounds most unlike Isana. She does not warm easily to people, especially not over something like a mere photograph. Besides, I saw that picture in the papers myself, and I did n
ot make the connection at the time. I find it hard to believe that she would.”
“Well, someone did,” I insisted. “And maybe they put the idea into Isana’s head. Whoever it was, though, wants me dead.”
“Dead?” Haman scowled. “What are you talking about?”
“I was attacked the morning of the funeral, not far from my own pavilion,” I told him. “There were three humans and a mage, all dressed in black with their faces covered. One of them cut me with a magical knife, spelled to inflict wounds that don’t heal.”
“By the Lady,” Haman muttered, running a hand through his curly hair in a way that reminded me of myself. It was a little disconcerting, actually. “I can’t believe he would do this.”
“Who?” I demanded, alarmed at the sudden anguish in his voice. “Are you telling me you know who’s behind the attack?”
“I can’t be sure,” Haman said firmly. “I must find out more before I say for certain.” He rose, his robes fluttering behind him in the gentle night wind. “Rest well, Sunaya. I will come and find you again in the morning, as soon as I know more.”
He left me there on the bench, and it was some time before my mind and heart settled enough for me to go back inside again.
29
“I do wish you had notified me about your meeting with Haman before you went off alone with him,” Iannis said as we walked back from the breakfast buffet. I’d told him over a large and very satisfying meal what had happened last night—by the time we’d returned to bed, I’d been too tired to go over it with him then. “But I am glad he shows some fatherly concern, and that he has agreed not to interfere with our union.”
“I am too,” I said, squeezing Iannis’s forearm gently. “I wasn’t trying to shut you out, you know. I just felt like it was something I needed to handle alone.”