My breath clouds the air in front of me, but I don’t feel the cold anymore. Just the static under my skin, buzzing through my bones.
Kai’s mother… and myfather?
But how is that even possible?
The words rattle around in my head, but the more I try to repeat them, the less sense it makes.
That can’t be right.
He must have said it wrong.
I must have heard it wrong.
Because there’s no world wheremyfather, myrational father, would ever put himself in that position.
Nother.
Notthem.
And yet…
It explains something.
No, it explainstoo much.
Is that why he would go to those alleyways? Because he was meetingher.
In the only way he could.
Did my mother know?
Christian says nothing. Just watches me like he’s waiting for something to crack.
And maybe something does.
“And what happened?” I ask. My voice sounds smaller than I expect.
Christian lets out a slow breath. “They got caught,” he says simply. “Or maybe they stopped hiding. It depends on who you ask. Either way, Gabriel found out.”
“And Irina?” I whisper.
His jaw tenses.
And it’s the way he looks away that answers me first, like the words taste bad before he even says them. And there’s so much more behind his watchful expression, I realize. Pain, maybe. Or regret. Maybe both. Maybe more.
“Got addicted to drugs. She was in bad shape for a while,” he says eventually. “She died soon after your father, and Wren, did.”
I don’t move. I don’t breathe. My lungs are too tight anyway.
My hands are shaking, though I don’t remember when they started.
“Shedied? Was it the drugs? An overdose?”
Christian looks at me for a long moment. So long, I think he won’t answer.
Then he says, quietly, “No.”
I blink. “Then how?”
