Don still doesn’t answer me. I groan, burying my face in my hands.
“Leigh, this is absurd,” he finally mutters. “You’re right. Iamin prison. How could I?—”
“You threatened me. You said that my ruling would bring instability.”
“I did say that, but?—”
“You are still trying to weasel your way onto the throne!”
“No.”
“Yes!”
“No,” Don protests. His eyes blaze with an intensity that catches me off guard. “That’s not true, not to mention impossible. I’ve been imprisoned here for months. I cannot speak to anyone outside the family, nor are you talking to me. I made many mistakes by lying to you, but I promise I’ve changed. I go to the confessional every day, and I have written amends. Didn’t you read my letters?”
I read them, but I didn’t believe them. Men like him don’t change.
“You are the Magician. You have led Eos for years, which means you are good at cheating the system,” I spit. Thefrustration rolling off Don in droves is almost tangible. “Tell me how you are sending information to Stellan.”
“As much as you refuse to believe me, I am not sending thisStellaninformation,” Don replies evenly. The sincerity in his voice gives me pause, but I quickly push the doubt aside.
“Who on the Council is working for you?” Don shakes his head, and I take a deep breath to keep going. “Are you also going to deny that you didn’t know Fynn was your son?”
Don stills. What little color he has left leaves his cheeks. But I’ve been fooled by him before, and I won’t let it happen again. “Fynn isn’t mine.”
I roll my eyes.Liar!
“My mother told me you got her pregnant. How did you find out Fynn was yours?”
Don opens his mouth several times before whispering, “Fynn isn’t mine.”
I appraise him. No wonder Don played cards so well. “My mother said you announced your intention to marry Lilura di Siena the samenight she learned she was pregnant with Fynn. Coincidence or were you trying to rub your relationship in her face because you knew Fynn was your child?”
Don takes a deep, shaky breath. “I loved your mother, even after she broke things off. The night she and your father announced they were pregnant, I lost my damn mind. I told everyone I was marrying Lilura to hurt her back. Lilura later broke off the engagement because she found out I still cared for Cynthia. For good reason, I suppose. It was wrong of me to use her like that. But I swear Fynn’s not—I didn’t—” He chokes off, seemingly overwhelmed by emotion. Could it be that Don Raelyn has a heart?
I rub my temples. If he did, he wouldn’t keep hurting the people he continues to claim to love most.
But if Lilura broke off her engagement to him because she knew about my mother, would she have suspected the truth about Fynn’s parentage? If she did, did she ever tell anyone? Maybe Maria or her favorite niece, Gianna?
“I had no idea Fynn was mine,” Don repeats. “If I had, then I wouldn’t have?—”
“Sent Thayer after us?” My question has him cowering like a small child. “Your orders killed your brother and son. All for a crown never destined to be yours.” My voice cracks as flashes of That Night return in a flurry. Fynn’s expression as the world shifted around us. How he reached for me seconds before he died. My lungs refuse to inflate.
Water spills down Don’s cheeks. He doesn’t wipe them away. My uncle chokes on his grief, and the display is almost too much to bear. A part of me clings to my memories of him. Of whom I thought he was. But that man was never real.
“I’m s-sorry,” Don blubbers.
I wither from his remorse. For the first time, I doubt Don is leaking information to Stellan. He looks gutted and pitiful, wailing over the child he didn’t know he had. The child hekilled. It’s the perfect ending for his villain story, but I don’t have it in me to gloat over his tears. I feel sorry for him, and the realization shakes me.
“You really didn’t know, did you?” I ask.
“No.” A lifetime of regret and pain fills that single word.
I look at Isolde, signaling with my eyes she should take me home. My uncle is not my mole. He won’t save me or Corona.
Isolde moves to the door to alert the guards that we are finished.
Don’s face flashes with panic. “Don’t go yet. Stellan’s article—tell me what it said.”
