With so few in the castle, because I don’t trust anyone right now, it takes a long time to find anyone. I wander through multiple levels, listening for anyone. Finally, on the fourth floor, I hear someone on the far side. Following the noise, I step into a room where Alivia and Ian are quietly talking.

“What’s going on?” I ask, probably sharper than necessary.

Alivia looks pale white, like she’s going to throw up any minute. Ian doesn’t look happy.

“We found him,” she says. “We followed him around town for a few hours.”

My mouth instantly goes dry.

I know exactly who she’s talking about.

My biological father.

“And?” I question. But the word comes out rough and quiet.

Alivia swallows, and when she can’t immediately find her words, Ian speaks for her.

“He didn’t do anything suspicious,” he says. “He went to the tavern. Fed from a feeder. He went to his house, and didn’t seem to do anything abnormal for the few hours we watched him.”

I kind of hate that. This would be so much easier if he was just obviously up to something. But if he appears normal, it means it will be much more difficult to get clear answers.

“Mina went inside and arrested him,” Alivia finishes. “She didn’t give him any kind of explanation, just that he was being taken to the castle for eventual questioning.”

Eventual. I know what that means. It’s a tactic we’ve used frequently. As immortals, we’re rarely in a hurry. But the days are incredibly long when you’re locked up in a dungeon. Letting a person sit for an extended period of time makes them confess sooner.

“So, he’s here?” I ask.

With a grim set to her lips, Alivia nods.

“He’s down in a cell on the lower level,” Ian says. “I put him in solitary. We figured we better talk to you first before we decide how to proceed.”

I nod, but I feel my vision glaze over a little as my brain runs a million miles a minute.

Meeting Alivia was scary. And I’d at least had a few people tell me a little bit about her. But my biological father? Every single thing about him is unknown, except that he is a Royal vampire.

None of us even know his name.

I wipe my hands on my pants, trying not to be so terrified.

“I want to see him,” I say without even thinking about it.

Alivia goes even paler, but Ian nods his head and walks to the door. Hesitantly, Alivia steps to my side and we follow her husband.

“Can I ask,” I say as we make our way through the passageways. “Because it’s pretty obvious you are. Why are you so terrified?”

Alivia looks over at me, a mix of a glare and surprise in her eyes.

“You just thought it was a hook up, you didn’t know what was going on,” I say. “You don’t know anything about the man as far as you’ve led me to believe. So why are you so scared?”

My mother, who only looks a year or two older than me, looks away. She shakes her head. “I think it’s because of when I saw him again, here in Roter Himmel,” she says. “I wasn’t…in a good place…in every way, when I saw him again.” She seems uncomfortable, unsure how to explain this. “And when I saw him, that’s when I realized what it meant for you.”

She looks over at me. “I gave you up for adoption because I thought it was best for you, that this was the way I could give you the best life possible. But when I saw him…” She shakes her head. “I knew it meant so many different things, and that it would ruin that normal life I’d tried to give you.”

She stares ahead. Even though she is a vampire, an immortal, and all of her instincts make her calm and deadly, her hands shake. “I guess that fear and panic is just coming back from that moment. And there are so many unknowns. I want answers.”

“I think you’d be a little nervous, too, if you had to wonder if a man had somehow known what you were long before you did,” Ian says as we turn a corner and descend down a flight of stairs.

We walk down a hall and turn into another. It’s dark down here. It smells of moisture and despair.

I’m reminded that there are as many occupants in the castle as there are prisoners. There is that group my interrogators collected when trying to vet the kingdom.

Just one more thing I need to deal with.

Finally, we turn down a hall past the entrance to the prison. There is a heavy metal door that Ian swings open. Inside is an interrogation room, much like the one I used before.

I wasn’t ready.

I really wasn’t.

Not yet.

But just inside, there is a window.

Beyond that is a room.

And sitting inside is a man.

His shoulders are broad and his frame is strong. Sitting down, I can tell he isn’t particularly tall, I’d guess around five foot nine. The dark blue t-shirt he wears reveals strong forearms and scarred hands.

His face is covered with thick facial hair that looks like it was shaved about five days ago. Thick, dark brown hair covers his head.

And here, even outside the room, even in the dim light, I can see his eyes.

More yellow than green, they stand out, striking.

They look exactly like mine.

Everything in me snags. Stutters. Hiccups.

Thunder, thunder, beat, beat, beat.

There he is.

The man who made up the other half of my DNA.

And I don’t know a single thing about him.

Not his name.

Not if he’s a good or evil person.

Nothing whatsoever.

He sits calmly at the table, staring blankly at the wall across from him.

I can’t read anything off of him.

“No one has said anything to him since he was brought in?” I ask, staring at the man.

“No,” Ian says.

I nod. “And he hasn’t said anything?”

He shakes his head.

Once more, I nod.

“It’s only been about four hours,” Ian says, looking back at the man his wife once slept with. “You said you wanted him to sweat it out for a while.”

“Leave him for another twenty-four hours,” I say. For just a second, a hitch of panic jumps in my stomach. Because we’re on a timeline now, the clock is ticking. “I want both of you to meet me back here, then. We’ll get some answers out of him.”

I turn and stalk down the hall. Away, putting distance between myself and that man.

I need to talk to someone about this. To go over and over how messed up this is. How I’m a product of a mistake or a manipulation.

But who the hell can I talk to?

Certainly not Eshan. Not when he was abandoned as a baby and left for dead before someone took him to the orphanage.

I can’t call Mom or Dad now, not that I could even begin to explain this to them.

Amelia couldn’t handle the truth.

All I want is to talk to Cyrus about this.

Anger, hot and vile rips through my blood.

I grab a vase sitting on a side table, and hurl it at the mirror on the wall as I walk past it.