Only an hour has past since we left town, but it’s a flurry of activity. Royals are escorted all over the place by armed soldiers. But when they see Cyrus, he’s met with cries of relief and demanding questions.

We can’t answer any of them. They deserve to know the answers. But there is no time.

We find Malachi and tell him to bring Lorenzo to us.

In a secluded home close to the castle, we wait.

“I don’t want him seeing you,” I say. “He can’t have gotten word yet that you’re alive, the people have only just now seen you. You can watch, but I don’t want him seeing you.”

Cyrus looks at me, wariness in his eyes. But I see something else: trust. He nods, and slips into the adjoining room, and I don’t even hear him breathing.

Thirty seconds later, the door opens, and three guards march Lorenzo in, guns pointed at his back and head. They shove him down into the seat across the table from me.

He meets my eyes, his own bloodshot, watering against the sun and pain ripping through is brain.

I feel sick. I want to literally tear his eyes from his head, so that my eyes can be my own. So that any tie I have to this man is erased from the earth forever.

“Are you alright, Sevan?” he asks, which makes me even angrier. “This invasion…” He shakes his head. “I can hardly believe that after all these years, it’s come to this.”

“Cut the caring bullshit,” I say. I lean forward. “I don’t know how much is a lie and how much is truth, that story about how you met Alivia, about how I was conceived. What I want to know is how many other children you have out there? How many are out there that you’ve hidden from Court?”

His gaze instantly sobers. His eyes harden. And I see it, one piece at a time chipping off. His façade. His lies.

“I know you’ve heard, because I asked that the truth be whispered outside your door,’” I say. “I wanted you to know that your children were arriving at Roter Himmel. Tell me, how many more are coming?”

There it is.

A tiny smile begins pulling in the corners of his mouth.

“I don’t have time for games, Lorenzo,” I say, making my tone icy cold. “I’m a very busy woman these days. It isn’t the easiest task, holding all this shit together on my own. There’s no time for grief. There’s no time to get my head on straight. I don’t even have time to breathe. So tell me what is going on, or I will peel your flesh from your bones, right here and now, and I will feed it to the birds piece by piece and make you watch.”

His expression does not falter. He holds that smile that makes me want to rip his lips off.

“You know, Court has had no problem pretending like the man who made our population possible didn’t exist,” Lorenzo says. He places his forearms on the table, leaning in slightly. Goosebumps flash over my skin at the unexpected change of topic to the Blood Father. “There isn’t even one single record in this city that bears his name. There are less than a dozen Royal or Born who were alive when he was, and every one of them seem happy to never hear his name spoken again.”

My insides grow cold. I feel very still and frozen.

That name echoes inside of my brain, over and over, and with each reverberation, my heart cracks.

“My own parents were taken from me at a young age,” Lorenzo continues. “I was alone, left to take care of myself for a long time. It wasn’t easy, especially in this town. So I became obsessed with the idea of family very early on. Family is supposed to be there for you. You are supposed to be surrounded by them. They’re supposed to help one another, be there to help you achieve your dreams, your goals.”

No. I know where this is going.

No.

“But because the Blood Father thought differently than his family, they turned their backs on him,” Lorenzo says. He’s very calm. And there’s a hint of excitement in his voice. “My parents were killed, at Cyrus’ own hand.”

I sit straighter, as if Lorenzo just slapped me.

He nods. “My father was caught feeding on a human outside of town but didn’t realize he was followed back into Roter Himmel. When Cyrus found what had happened, realized how much this human had seen, he executed the human and my father. And my mother…” he shakes his head, his expression bitter and hard. “Even though she was human, she tried to save my father, and it cost her her life as well.”

I feel sick.

Because I understand his bitterness, his pain, his anger.

Cyrus doesn’t even remember doing this. I asked him what he knew about Lorenzo. If he had remembered killing Lorenzo’s parents, he would have told me.

Cyrus took away his family, and doesn’t even remember it.

“If we didn’t have to hide, if we weren’t keeping our existence a secret because Cyrus is afraid, my family wouldn’t have been slaughtered,” Lorenzo says in a thick voice. “I hated hiding, but I’d seen our kind killed by humans, because we were outnumbered.”

My heart beats so fast. My brain is exhausted trying to keep up. To piece all of these pieces together, to figure out what they mean.

“Left alone, I never identified with anyone, my entire life, except with the stories I heard of the Blood Father.”

He folds his hands, one over the other, and smiles. “I was surprised as a teenager that there were no books about him. There were only legends. So I took it upon myself to become his historian. I asked, and maybe because they felt sorry for me, others told me what they knew. They told me of his travels around the world. Of him building his family. Of his rise to power. Of how he could influence the world.”

“My son was a power-hungry mogul who wanted to take the world for his own,” I say. The ice around my heart makes it very difficult to breathe, much less speak. “The world would have descended into constant bloodshed and ruin if he had taken crown over it.”

Lorenzo gives a little laugh, his eyes falling to the table. “Probably so,” he says. “But you still have to admire him. For spreading our kind. We wouldn’t be here if not for him.”

Madness. He’s spouting madness.

“Why are your children here?” I change directions, leaning forward. My eyes burn into him, begging to find the truth hidden beneath his skin, written on the surface of his scarred, black heart.

“They are here, because after being patient and building my family, after hiding them from knowledge of the Court for the last six hundred years, I have asked them to come. Our time has finally arrived. Now that the King is off the throne.”

I feel my face go numb. I sit back in my chair, needing more room to breathe.

There were whisperings at Court. That Royals were not happy with Cyrus. That things needed to change.

“The Royals, Court, the Houses will not mourn that tyrant’s death,” Lorenzo continues, and I hate that absolute confidence in his voice. “But his absence will throw the world into chaos. You may have experience, Sevan, you may have great ideas. But you and Cyrus? You are only two sides of the same coin. After more than two thousand years, the time for change has finally arrived.”

He has gathered his large family so that he can challenge me for the throne. He has brought his own Royal support, people who have claim and say, to back him.

“You want to be King,” I say.

Lorenzo smiles. “I want the people to be free. I want them to finally live free of an ages-old tyrant. I only want to help guide them into a new age. Perhaps that is one where all the world knows we exist. Perhaps that is one where the dominion of weak humans comes to an end. But I do believe there is need for an usher.”

I shake my head.

I’m filled with horror.

Because I can picture it all. Everything he’s described. And with everything that has happened in the last few weeks, I see how easily it could be brought to pass.

“You’ll never gain the support of all the Royals,” I say, shaking my head. “No, they are not all enamored with Cyrus and the way he’s ruled things all these years. But the vast majority do not want to see the world ruined by our kind.”

“Oh,” Lorenzo says, leaning forward. “But this is my ultimate goal, Sevan.” There’s a light dancing in his eyes, and I see passion there. I see drive. I see centuries of work. “This is how we change the world. There will be no difference, because in the end, we are all the same. Every single vampire may prove themselves. There will no longer be Born, there will no longer be Royal.”

This. This is how he wins.

Because for every Royal, there are a hundred Born.

“The division of the Born and the Royals limits our kind,” he continues. “I may have resented that I was born a privileged Royal who had to do nothing to prove myself, but it did afford me opportunities. It gave me my chance to find a way to bring our kind back into one family with no division.”

The words sound beautiful.

But the reality of it will spell the end for mankind.

“I will stop you,” I say, leaning forward. “I will kill you right here, right now.”

“And what if I kill you first?” he says. His words are ice cold, but there is a smile on his face.

“Then I will just come back, over and over. I will never stop getting in your way.”

All of my insides shake and quiver.

He smiles. “Don’t worry, Sevan. Unlike you and Cyrus, I could never kill one of my own children.”

A chill works its way down my spine at this monster calling me one of his own children.

My phone rings in my pocket and I instantly whip it out, pressing it to my ear.

“There are more of them!” my spy shouts. He sounds frantic. “Ten more cars just drove up, and I see more down the road.”

“How many?” I demand, locking eyes with Lorenzo.

“There have to be sixty-five more here,” the spy says. “In addition to the thirty I’ve already told you about.”

One hundred.

There are nearly one hundred of Lorenzo’s children here at our doorstep.

A sharp ringing sounds in my ears and I set the phone down on the table without hanging up.

“How many?” I whisper. “How many are there?”

Lorenzo, my biological father, looks up at me from beneath his eyelashes. “Four here at court,” he begins. “Thirteen in Los Angeles. Twenty-six in Ghana. Twenty-eight in Cairns, Australia.” My blood runs chill as I begin totaling up the numbers in my head.

“Thirty-nine in Buenos Aires, Argentina,” he just keeps spouting numbers. “Forty-seven in North Korea. Fifty-one in New Delhi. And exactly one hundred between my wives in Italy.”

I want to throw up.

Lorenzo has 308 children. Plus me. Plus however many others like me that slipped through his fingers.

There were just over four hundred members here at Court. And I’ve just shipped nearly twenty-five of them off around the globe.

“How many more are coming here?” I ask. And I can’t hide the quake that leaks into my voice.

Once again, Lorenzo smiles. “All of them.”

I feel like I’m having a stroke. I swear my brain is flickering in and out. I can’t process it all. I can’t take it all in. I can’t think through all of the implications.

“This doesn’t have to be a frightening time, Sevan,” he says calmly. He reaches forward, trying to take my hand, but I yank it back, glaring darkly at him. “With your support, this can be such an easy transition. There won’t need to be any lives lost.”

I shake my head. “Never. I will never, ever support you or this mutiny.”

He makes a sad breathy sound. He shakes his head, and I hate the condescending look in his eyes. “Don’t do this, Sevan. The King has fallen. This is the end of an era. The world will change. Do not make yourself vulnerable by standing alone.”

The door makes a squealing sound as it swings open.

“Oh, but she is never alone.”

It’s as if I watch it in slow motion, as Lorenzo’s face changes from smug and dark, to shocked and terrified.

It all happens in a fraction of a second. Cyrus is on top of him, fangs bared. They topple one over the other, rolling across the floor.

Cyrus is quicker and stronger. He takes Lorenzo by the front of his shirt, and drags the man out into the sunlight.

I scramble after them, darting out into the street.

But something is wrong when I look around.

There are people, frozen in the streets, their eyes turned toward the mouth of the canyon.

I turn, and my stomach disappears, my hands go numb.

I see them there. Bodies. People. Dozens and dozens of them.

I can’t count them all. But I know it instantly.

There are more than a hundred of them.

“The King may have evaded death,” Lorenzo says darkly, dangling from Cyrus’ grasp. “But the reign of this monarchy is over.”

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