Aurora's POV
"Answer me."
Megan does not move. Her hands are still in her lap. Her face is still blank. But something behind her eyes has shifted. Something that looks less like control and more like the edge of a fall.
"Who is your father, Megan?"
She laughs once.
It sounds wrong. Hollow. Like she rehearsed it years ago and forgot what it was supposed to mean. "You really don't know," she says. "No." "And the messenger didn't tell you?"
"They told me to ask you." That lands somewhere. I see it move through her face before she catches it, "Of course they did," she says quietly. "They always make someone else do the hard part."
I wait.
She looks at the box in my hands instead of at me.
"My mother told me when I was sixteen," she says. "I didn't believe her at first. I thought she w
