Page 81 of Sky’s Edge

No lightning.

Just black.

This meant he was feeling deep, but it wasn’t the precursor to demonic anger or arousal.

It was something else.

Thus, I asked, “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

His mouth got tight, but he guided us to the couch and down to sit on it.

“Chamber fire,” he called out, and blue flames leapt in the fireplace. “Your voice will be added to the command module for this room,” he stated.

I nodded, too tuned to him to be freaked at this statement.

A muscle jumped up his cleanshaven cheek.

Then he said, “It’s official. My father was murdered.”

I reached up and caught him at the side of his neck. “Tanyn.”

“It’s worse, sweetheart,” he murmured. “There’s indisputable evidence he’d been drugged and for a very long time.”

“Drugged? Or on drugs?” I queried.

“Drugged,” he stated. “He would not take this on his own accord. No one would take it on their own accord. In fact, whoever drugged him, and we have a good idea of who that is, should never have been able to access the drug in the first place. It’s strictly used for two purposes and two purposes only. In matters that pertain to an imminent threat to realm security, something it has never been needed to do, or to control the criminally insane.”

I was struck dumb at this news.

“It’s excruciatingly expensive,” he continued. “One of the ingredients is a potion made by a single witch, the only witch who knows how to make it, and that witch was the one who stipulated the extreme limits of its use. The military can’t use it randomly or at their whim. Only in matters where there’s a verified threat. As for the criminally insane, that doesn’t need explanation considering what it does is make whoever takes it essentially an automaton, programmed to do what whoever gives it tells them to do.”

Lord Beelzebub.

This meant…

“Tatra was controlling your father,” I deduced.

He jerked up his chin. “It could be no one else. And it explains…”

I took my hand from his neck to grab his and pump it. “It explains…?”

“My mother has two sisters. They were given leave to visit us on Sigil. Only once a year. This is the reason I had birthday, Summer Solstice and Dead Winter presents, or we had any extras, because it was them who either brought that stuff, or begged my father to put it into a shipment. They’re also the reason we had our pets. They brought them too.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And I overheard them talking once when they were there. About how they couldn’t believe my father scraped off Mom like he did. How he was head over heels for her. How he acted like she hung the moon and lit the stars. And how quickly it happened.”

Cold was invading my body.

“Arnaud was born just shy of a year and a half after I was. My father had barely exiled us before he came into the world. She acted fast.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“It isn’t confirmed it was her, but someone was controlling him, and she was the only one who got anything out of it.”

Gods.

I couldn’t imagine all that was going through Tanyn’s mind, it had to be agony.