“This is impossible,” he breathed, staring at the blood sample.
“What?” I stepped closer, pulse quickening. “What’s impossible?”
“Your blood, Your Majesty. There are clear traces of wolf ancestry. Very clear. Unmistakable.”
The room tilted. “What? No. That can’t be right. I’m human. I’ve always been human.”
“And something else,” Umrik continued, like I hadn’t spoken. “Something powerful. Witch ancestry, very unique.”
“That’s impossible,” I repeated, my voice shaking now. “I’m human. Just human. Normal, boring human who happened to open a portal one time because of a spell I found in a very old book.”
Umrik shook his head slowly. “You are not entirely human, Your Majesty. You never were.”
I turned to Mal, needing him to tell me this was crazy, that Umrik was wrong, that this was all some mistake.
But he wouldn’t meet my eyes. His jaw was clenched, his shoulders tight, his entire body radiating guilt so obvious it might as well have been written in neon across his forehead.
“Say something,” I demanded.
Silence.
“Mal. Say something.”
He finally looked at me, and the expression on his face confirmed everything I was starting to suspect.
“You knew,” I said.Thiswas what he’d been hiding.
“Wen...”
“How long have you known?”
“I suspected...”
“How. Long.”
He took a deep breath. “Since the beginning.”
Through the window, I could see Killian in the garden, proudly holding up a handful of purple flowers and waving at us with a huge grin on his face, completely oblivious to the drama unfolding inside.
The room spun. Five years. He’d known, or suspected, for five years that I wasn’t entirely human, and he’d said nothing. He’d let me think I was just some regular human woman who’d stumbled into a magical world, let everyone judge me for being the first human queen, let them call our son a bastard while he knew the whole time there was more to the story.
“I will just be over there,” Umrik said, backing away slowly. “Far away. From this.”
Smart man. That was probably why he’d lived for so long.
“I need air,” I managed.
“Wen, please...”
“I need air. Now.”
I walked toward the door on shaky legs, ignoring Mal calling my name. Just as I reached the garden, Killian came running to me, his arms full of purple flowers and his face absolutely glowing with pride.
“MAMA! LOOK! I found TWELVE! I’m a HERO!”
I forced a smile, crouching down to his level. “You’re definitely a hero. Tell me about them.”
“Okay!” He launched into an explanation of where he’d found each one. “This one was under a bush. This one was by the tree. This one was HIDDEN behind a rock, that one was super hard. And this one was purple but also kinda pink? Is that purple? Or pink?”
