I did not let his words move me. I had learned, over twenty-one years, to be very careful about things that sounded like what I had always wanted to hear. Those were the most dangerous things of all, not because they were always false, but because the wanting of them made it harder to see them clearly.
I looked at Jasper Vael across Rowan’s table, and I kept my hands flat and my breathing even, and I waited.
‘I acted on information that was incomplete,’ he said. His voice was even. Not apologetic exactly, not the performed remorse of someone managing a political situation. Something more careful than that. Precise. ‘And on assumptions about your bloodline that I have since learned were incorrect. I am aware of the moon-born bloodline. I understand what the silver eyes mean. I understand
