“How?” Erador said.

  Eli reached down to grab the flowers he dropped and didn’t give Erador his usual smile when he greeted him. He looked ashamed that he’d been caught. Erador should’ve known he’d fake his death again.

  “What are you doing here?” Erador said, straining to hold himself from yelling.

  Eli stepped toward the end table and set the flowers down. “I came to see my son.”

  “Your… son?” Erador's lips parted as he looked to Martin. “This is your son?”

  “I told him about you.” Eli went to Martin and set his hand on his shoulder. “Isn’t that right, Martin?”

  “Miraline?” Erador said. “You knew this is your grandfather?”

  “Yes… but—”

  Erador shook his head. “I can’t believe this.”

  “I didn’t know who he was until what happened to my father,” she blurted.

  “What the fuck?” Dethil said. “I trusted you Eli. I looked up to you and now… this. You never told us he was a fucking witch!”

  Eli raised his hand. “There’s no need to yell.”

  “No need?” Dethil said, moving closer. “Our people are being murdered and you came to our enemy to be with this man who abused his daughter. Witches could be killing us!”

  “Dethil,” Erador warned.

  “I won’t be quiet.” Dethil shook his head. “How could you leave us like that? How could you make us mourn you when you’re not dead?”

  Eli frowned. “I left to be with my son. The Paradin contracts are life binding. If we leave, we forfeit our life.”

  Erador blinked. “What are you saying?”

  “You haven’t read it?” Eli said.

  “My father never gave me a choice.”

  Dethil made a high pitch noise that sounded like a furious groan; he hadn’t read it either. Jerus made him blindly go along with it.

  “Twenty years ago… all those Paradins… they left.” Erador tried to say with certainty but his tone slipped.

  Eli stared at Erador for a good moment. “Leaving doesn’t mean they made it far.”

  Erador’s eyes widened at the floor.

  “They were killed?” Dethil said, quietly. “All of them?”

  “Little by little, I’m sure,” Eli said. “By who and when, I don’t know. Maybe a few lucky got away.”

  “Who killed them?” Erador said. “My father wasn’t well when they left.”

  “You’d have to ask your father.” Eli took scissors and a comb from a shelf and ran it through Martin’s hair. “I never involved myself in any of that.”

  “How did you get in New Akthelia?” Dethil said.

  “I was pardoned years ago because of Martin.” Eli trimmed Martin’s beard with a pair of scissors. “He’d done a great service for New Akthelia.”

  Dethil’s mouth dropped. “It was that easy?”

  “No,” Erador said. “It couldn’t have been. You told them something.”

  Eli brushed hairs from Martin’s shoulder. “It was nothing noteworthy.”

  Erador banged his fist against the wall. “What did you tell them?”

  Eli stopped trimming and looked up. “Your father’s condition.”

  “That isn’t for them to know,” Erador growled.

  “They aren’t worried about Lucrethia and neither should you worry about them hurting you.”

  “Not worry?” Erador said. “New Akthelia hates us!”

  “It’s been many years since the queen’s murder and none of us had any part in it.” Eli set the scissors and comb on the shelf and moved closer to Erador. “You can have a chance here, Erador. Emera was given that. I helped her.”

  Erador’s eyes widened. All this time he thought she was a traitor. He wanted it to stay that way, knowing what they did to her and how she perished.

  “You helped her?”

  Eli nodded. “She wants Breck to join her.”

  Erador shifted his gaze away. He didn’t want to let him know Emera was dead and was glad Dethil knew better not to say it.

  “Besides your son… why did you come here?” Erador said. “Were you tired of Lucrethia or did you believe my father was going to die?”

  Eli swallowed and rubbed his throat. “I... can’t say.”

  “You can’t say after the time you spent in Lucrethia, and practiced that religion? What happened to finding Paradise and having a place for you son? What happened to your faith in my father?”

  Eli dusted the brush across Martin’s shoulder, the clipped hairs falling to the floor. “One thing I can say about your father is that he has done much good. As for Paradise, I’ve waited too long. I don’t have much time left.”

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  Dethil frowned. “You don’t think it’s real, do you?” He stepped forward when Eli didn’t respond. “What made you stop? You believed it more than any of us.”

  Eli set the brush on the windowsill. “Judgment told me my son has no place there. Why should I get one and not him?”

  “Judgment is right,” Miraline snapped.

  Eli sighed. “Well my son didn’t deserve this. I don’t care who initiated the fight. Judgment walked away without harm, while this is what was left of my son.”

  Erador couldn’t fathom what Martin meant to Eli, but he knew what he meant to Miraline. He still mistrusted her. Was she being honest about Martin? He didn't want her to keep things from him again. But he also didn’t trust Eli anymore, after he faked his death.

  “Miraline didn’t deserve mistreatment either.” Erador moved to Eli. “Tell me she didn’t, Eli.”

  Eli’s gaze dragged to Erador. “Despite what your father has done to you, you’re still there.”

  “Don’t turn the tables,” Erador spat and pointed at Miraline. “This is about her. How he abused and controlled her and her mother who died because of him.”

  “Your father did the same to you,” Eli said. “He beat you to get you to listen.”

  Erador tensed his jaw. “At least I can admit what he did to me, but you can’t admit that your son more than damaged your granddaughter and killed her mother. You can’t see any fault in him, can you?”

  “I can’t change what he did and I don’t expect him to be forgiven,” Eli said, looking to Miraline. “But I love my son.”

  “That’s great,” Dethil said, with sarcasm. “But that’s not the real issue. Sescina, Breck, and Pia are dead.”

  “What?” Eli said, voice breaking. “How?”

  “We’re trying to figure that out. So far, it looks like your son is a part of it,” Erador said, looking to Martin. “I wouldn't be surprised if the witch coven was looking for revenge.”

  Eli shook his head. “That was years ago.”

  “With the healing blood rumor going around, maybe they’re afraid Judgment will be back,” Dethil said. “Maybe they sent Yuni after us and she let the Raven free to kill us.”

  Miraline stiffened because she knew it was her, but that didn't mean the witches weren't involved in killing them. Dethil didn't know that. He didn't know that Erador had met the Raven. Though he didn't seem threatening, Erador still was unsure of him.

  “No. No.” Eli raised his lip and gave a little scoff. “It’s not him.”

  “He left death threats in his cage,” Erador said.

  “You can say he lost his feathers a long time ago,” Eli said, raising his hands. “He’s not coming for any of us.”

  Erador had no proof the Raven had done anything, and after seeing him, he wasn’t sure he had. “How can you be certain?”

  “Did you consider that the Raven could be a victim?” Eli said. “That his actions were the cause of something unjust that happened to him?”

  Erador rubbed his neck. Some people assumed Erador was like the Raven, because he didn’t believe in the religion. His father was trying to control him and mold him into what he wanted. Erador couldn’t imagine taking the actions the Raven had, but he remembered how angry he used to be at his father and how trapped he felt. Maybe those same feelings are what led the Raven to act.

  Dethil raised his lip as if he didn’t believe the Raven was a victim. “That doesn’t make what he did right.”

  “Maybe not, but how many people are born evil like Judgment has spun the tale?” Eli said.

  Like they had spun the tales of lurkers being mindless beings. They once had a purpose and a life they missed. Like Erador had spun Miraline into being a horrible person, when she was trying to keep herself together. Maybe he did the same to Emera too, but he didn’t want to think of that.

  “They did that to the lurkers,” Erador said.

  “Good for you.” Eli smiled proudly, but it didn’t make Erador feel good like he thought it would. Now he felt ashamed by learning something new.

  “So, what did happen to the Raven?” Dethil said.

  “The Raven was once devout to your father’s religion, but he began to see things differently that led him to change. He no longer believed in your father, and that’s what led him down a different path.”

  “You don’t know?” Erador said.

  Eli took in a breath and sat on the bed. “I know what the Raven felt at the time because he told me his grievances with Judgment. So, no... I don’t know everything. He considered your father and his practices to be inhumane and unethical and he wanted to put an end to it all.”

  “That’s why he sabotaged us?” Erador said.

  Eli nodded. “I first saw the Raven in Odinaty when he murdered the king.”

  “You were there?” Dethil stuttered.

  “I was a renowned painter,” Eli said quietly, as if he were ashamed of it. “What the Raven did was brutal, but it was what opened my eyes to change. He’s the reason I came to Lucrethia.”

  Erador’s lips parted as everyone looked at Eli in silence.

  “The Raven… he’s like you,” Dethil said, looking to Erador.

  Erador let out an uncomfortable chuckle. “Let’s not compare.”

  “He defied your father and because of it he was punished,” Eli said. “He was kept in that cage because Judgment can’t let him go. It’s why he didn’t kill him and made the rumor that he could regenerate.”

  “You think my father wants him to suffer?” Erador said.

  “It could’ve been your father’s way of making an example out of him, so no one would defy him again,” Eli said.

  That didn’t work. Erador had defied him, but he never locked him away.

  Dethil sat in the chair by the bed and caressed his scalp. “How can he take being locked in a dungeon for fifty years?”

  “It could make anyone go mad.” Miraline’s eyes widened. “Sometimes I felt like I was imprisoned by the crystal vapor.”

  Though Eli seemed certain the Raven wouldn't touch them, he had the perfect motive to kill them—freedom and ending Judgment’s legacy. If it was him, he wasn’t doing it alone but with who? Miraline didn’t know anything about the coven and likely Eli didn’t either.

  “What do you know about the Coven of Rebirth?” Erador said.

  Eli shook his head. “I know hardly anything.”

  “What of Yuni and potential ties?” Dethil said, looking to Miraline.

  “I never saw her… that I know of.” Miraline bit her lip. “I didn’t know much about the coven because I was always drugged.”

  Erador knew someone who did. “We’re leaving.”

  “Already?” Eli said, rising. “You have a chance here. All of you.”

  “No,” Erador said, shaking his head. “I’m not going to abandon Lucrethia like you did.”

  Erador ignored how Eli’s face dropped and opened the door. Dethil moved out first, and patted Erador’s shoulder. Miraline looked at her father as if to make sure he hadn’t moved, before she went past them.

  “Erador,” Eli said. “I never meant it to be like this.”

  “You wanted to leave quietly, right?” Erador tensed his jaw and looked him over. “It makes me wonder what you left behind in Odinaty.”

  “Things I cared about and others I didn't.” Eli gave a pained smile. “It wasn’t any easier leaving Lucrethia. It was harder. One of the hardest choices I made.”

  “Yet here you are,” Erador said, widening his arms. “How did you do it?”

  “I’ll tell you if you agree to use it.”

  “I already told you I won’t leave. Not like that.”

  Eli blinked. “Then you’re braver than I. I’m proud of you, Erador. I wish your father could see the good man you’ve become.”

  Erador dropped his head. “We won’t tell anyone you’re here.”

  He left. The pain surged through him. Miraline noticed as she touched his arm. He already said goodbye to the Eli he knew and he wasn’t sure who this Eli was. Erador wished he was left dead in his mind because revisiting him brought more questions, and more pain. Breck, Pia, and Sescina never had a choice to fake their deaths and here Eli was, alive and well when Erador thought this whole time he could’ve been murdered too. He didn’t feel sorry for Eli anymore and he never wanted to see him again.