Ice crawled across my skin. I took a step back, my spine hitting the brick of the archway.He knew about the Sentinels. And then I remembered—this wasn’t the first time he’d said that. When I’d eavesdropped on him and his advisor, they’d been talking about the group of rebels.
How much did he know?
But he wasn’t done. “Or you might be curious about your father and the truths of his past.”
The floor seemed to shake beneath my feet as his words knocked me off balance. “What are you?—”
“Which will it be, Miss Wolff?” His voice was soft, unassertive, as if asking what I wanted for dinner.
It wasn’t a question I had to consider for even a heartbeat.
“My father,” I responded. “What do you know about my father?”
Gayl’s lips split into a sad smile. “Oh, I knew your father well. We grew up together.”
I blinked, my jaw falling open. “What? You lived in Feywood?” He nodded. “How—how did I not know this?”
Theodore Gayl was an Alchemist, of course, but all manners ofmagic lived in Veridia City. I’d always assumed he’d been born here in the capital, perhaps even in this very palace, and that was how he’d gotten so close to the former emperor.
If he grew up with my father…how had my aunt and uncle never told me? It seemed like the kind of information one might be intrigued by, that the emperor of our realm used to climb the same trees as me, run through the forests of my childhood, practice magic on the very soil I was raised on.
“Not many people know of my origins,” Gayl explained, turning away and walking deeper into the tower. “I changed my name and moved to Veridia City well into my second decade of life, and as far as history is concerned, this was where my story began. But yes, I was born in Feywood. I knew who you were the moment I laid eyes on you in the Decemvirate briefing, Miss Wolff.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Did you know my mother, too?”
He shook his head. “No, sadly, I left before Hamilton met her. But you look so much like him—perhaps not in your features, but in your mannerisms. The way you hold yourself, that cunning glint in your eye, the rare smile I caught a glimpse of in the great hall. It’s as if I’m seeing him again.”
As he spoke, a writhing sensation began in the pit of my stomach. A small, sharp thought pecked at my mind, whispering words I didn’t want to hear. Piecing together fragmented edges I’d rather leave broken on the floor.
“Your Majesty,” I whispered, closing my eyes as if that would blind me to his answer. To the truth. But I had to ask again—I had toknow. “How did you know my father?”
Thick silence permeated the air, aside from Gayl’s strong, steady breaths. I, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to force air into my lungs.
“I think you already know the answer to that,” he said quietly.
My head shook as I turned away, back to the open air of the archway, letting the cool breeze ground me.
“Rose, look at me.” His voice was right behind me,commanding yet gentle at the same time, urging me to turn around and face the truth.
Staring back at me was the same dark blue-gray eye that haunted my visions these last few days. The same eye I saw gazing up at me from a pool of blood. The same eye that once admired me adoringly while reading in front of the fireplace, that tightened in concern when I skinned my little knees, that glowed with pride when I cast my first spell.
How had I not seen it?
How had I notknown?
Gayl took a deep breath before uttering the words that irrevocably shattered my world.
“Hamilton Wolff was my brother.”
32
Rose
The tower spun.
Hisbrother.
Myuncle.
