Page 143 of Frozen Hearts and Death Magic

“Isofel. And I don’t see what’s wrong.”

“You don’t see what’s wrong? If you aren’t disgusted and horrified, you have a problem. Maybe you do have a problem.”

“Fine, then.” Arguing that he didn’t see anything disgusting in his son wasn’t going to lead anywhere. He took a deep breath. No, he wasn’t going to let it go. “Just so you know, Isofel is the most honorable young man I know. He has a good heart. Not only a good heart, he has extremely powerful magic. He’s smart, gentle and kind. I can’t imagine a better husband.”

Ursiana sighed, as if exasperated. “Azir. Your beloved, dear son might be the most wonderful human being that has ever stepped foot in Aluria. In fact, it’s charming, adorable, how much you love him. Quite something. Now please. We’re adults here. We know how babies are made. We both can count months. Don’t pretend to be so dim. Oh, maybe you like to pretend it so you don’t need to think about what you’ve done.”

“You can’t be saying I’m dumb and giving me some cryptic messages. Either I’m dumb and unable to understand anything, or I can guess the meaning of your half sentences. What is it?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Her voice was odd—as if she were crying. In fact, she sat down and covered her face.

He got up, sat beside her, and asked softly, “What is it?”

She shook her head and now she was crying. He’d never seen her so distressed and felt at a loss as to what to do. “Ursiana. I’m here.” He reached out and held her hand, which she pulled away.

“Don’t touch me.” Her words came with difficulty between sobs.

He kept re-reading her words in his mind. Only one possibility came to him. But that didn’t make sense. “I’m trying to understand. You can’t mean that Leandra is my daughter. She was born ten months after the gathering, premature on top of that. Her eyes are blue like her father’s. And she’s a necromancer.” A necromancer. A necromancer who could walk in the hollow like a deathbringer? “She’s not my daughter, is she?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Ursiana mumbled.

“I think I should know.”

He stopped crying and glared at him. “Should know? Should know? After using me and tossing me? What should you know? How I managed not to become disgraced, how I didn’t become an outcast? Did you care?”

“I saw you with someone else.”

“It wasn’t true!” she hurled.

“Fine. Now, unless she’s a donkey, she can’t both be mine and have been born ten months after the gathering, can she?”

“Why? You wanted us to announce her birth on the right date? You don’t think anyone would have guessed? You don’t think anyone would have done the math?”

Azir was still trying to figure things out, still half believing her words. “Your husband didn’t mind it?”

“He helped me! He saved me. And he needed an heir.”

Azir swallowed. Too many feelings at once. He had suspected it for a small moment when the girl had shown up in Umbraar, but she had blue eyes… Then, his father had blue eyes too. It was still hard to process. “You should have told me.”

“Why? So you’d sneer at me?”

“You betrayed me.”

“Oh, that’s rich coming from you, who had already been with that Ironhold princess. Now, your twins were born four months after the gathering. There’s no way you can say they were conceived after it. It means I was a silly distraction. Fine. My fault.”

“You were not a distraction. How can you think that?”

“So then the Ironhold princess was a distraction. Or how can you explain not even looking at me on the last day?”

“You betrayed me. Or I thought so.”

She rolled her eyes. “Your talk of betrayal when you had already put some children in another woman’s belly is ridiculous.”

“But I hadn’t. I had never met Ticiane. I never had anything with her. I wasn’t using you. I was serious.”

“Well, explain your twins, especially your boy with green eyes like yours.”

“They’re not like mine. Different color. And the twins, they’re not mine. Yes, they’re my children and I love them.” Still loved them, even Irinaia. “But I never… I had a vision of this woman asking me to help her kids. She said she was dying.”

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