Carro flinched, felt a brief urge to defend the man and woman he’d known as his parents, but then a feeling of rightness descended on him. He had never fitted in. His father had always hated him. His mother, too. He’d looked too different from his sister to believe they were related. He’d just assumed that his father had used a different breeder for him and his sister, but now . . .
“I’ve not shared my rooms with a woman; that is not possible for me since Riders have sworn off such pleasures. But as Pirosian heir, I needed a successor. So I paid a young virgin of the purest Pirosian blood to give me one, for good money, and then hid you in a place I knew my enemies would not look and would not recognise you. The Thillei are more slippery than you think.”
Yes, they were, Carro realised. T
