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“He was such a chubby, beautiful baby,” she said at last in a soft voice. “But he was a healer, so they shaped him into one of them. I knew from the beginning they would do that.”
“So you just left?” Costas snapped. “You just abandoned him—and me?”
“No, of course not!” She sighed and ran a hand down her face. “Leaving you both was the last thing I wanted to do.”
“Then why did you do it?” he asked in a quieter voice.
Amara cleared her throat. “This is clearly a very personal matter for the two of you, and I wish we had the luxury to respect that and offer you some privacy. But given the situation we all find ourselves in, I think it would be best if everyone was brought up to date on exactly what has been happening on this island.”
Isolde nodded slowly. “I, too, would like answers about the current situation.”
When she inclined her head toward the seats, the house’s residents launched into movement, returning to the places they had occupied before. The rest of us followed, although Isolde was now in my seat. I lingered at the back, standing close to Nik, and this time no one took any notice of me.
“Let’s progress in chronological order,” Amara said, looking at Isolde. “You said you didn’t want to leave your young children, so what happened to compel you to do so?”
“The Constantines have ruled this island from the beginning,” she said. “But over the years they’ve become complacent and over-confident, too used to a docile population. I was one of those compliant townsfolk, once upon a time, and I was even flattered to be chosen as the future bride of Augustine. I knew that was my future from a young age, and I was delighted with it.” She shook her head, as if unable to believe her youthful naïveté.
“But once I was actually married, everything began to unravel. Being in such constant contact with the Constantines gradually stripped away the mesmerizations that had been with me from childhood. At first I was confused and frightened—and even more so once Augustine explained mesmerization to me.”
“So they taught you to do it too, after you were married?” Amara asked.
Isolde shook her head. “I’m not a true Constantine, so they didn’t go that far. But they spoke openly in front of me, and when I asked questions, my husband answered them.” Her face twisted in disgust. “I don’t think it even occurred to him that I might be horrified by the information.”
“So that turned you against Father and Grandmother and the others?” Costas asked. His eyes hadn’t left her face the entire time she talked, as if he was weighing and measuring each word.
“Of course!” She shuddered. “Although in truth, I had already reached the point of being afraid and unhappy before that. I had worked out something was wrong, but I didn’t understand what until the revelation about mesmerization. I thought I had just idealized them out of youthful ignorance or something.”
“So you decided to leave?” The crease between Amara’s eyes told me she was unconvinced by her own suggestion.
“No.” Isolde’s eyes were on Costas. “I would never have left my children just because I felt uncomfortable. And while I deplored the state of affairs on the island, there didn’t seem anything I could do about it. But then they went too far.”
“Of course they did,” Costas muttered.
“There was a boy in the town who possessed a strong healing seed—one of those situations where a child is born with a much stronger seed than his parents.”
I shifted on my feet, all too familiar with that situation. Nik glanced down at me, and I nodded slightly, managing to muster a strained smile.
“At first the Constantines did nothing,” Isolde continued. “In retrospect, I think they were waiting to see if either Costas or Ignatius turned out to be a girl. If I had borne a daughter, the boy would have been marked as a future Constantine son-in-law. But my children were both boys, and Grandmother knew I didn’t want any more.”
“So they had to get rid of the child,” Costas said bitterly. “They couldn’t have any strong healers outside the family.”
Everyone at the table stirred at his words, their faces twisting into various expressions of displeasure and grief. No one disputed his words, however.
“I see you’ve already worked out how the family ran things,” Isolde said to her son. “I’m afraid I was slower to realize than I should have been. But the boy grew sick a number of years before reaching the age of activation, and I was the one sent to treat him.”
My eyes widened, and Nik and I exchanged a look. The hubris of the Constantines really had grown beyond reason if they had sent an outsider to do a task like that.
“My instructions were to claim I had arrived too late and that he was beyond saving,” Isolde confirmed. “But in reality, I was to use my power to end his life. Augustine mesmerized me himself just before I left, but he overestimated the effect of his lies. There is no truth under the sun that would convince me to use my power to kill a child. And any claim that the boy was a threat melted to nothing when I saw him weak and ill in his bed.”
“Augustine forgot that he never had control of your mind,” I murmured. “He could convince you of his lies—at least briefly—but he couldn’t force you to do something so contrary to your nature. And especially not in the face of evidence to the contrary.”
It made sense. There was a reason Grey had made so much use of his charm, despite his ability. He had tailored his mesmerizations around each person—to me he had spoken of a bloodless coup to save the kingdom, and to Ida he had promised a life of peace and safety.
Isolde turned to look at me, her brows drawing together. “I don’t think I caught your name?”
“I’m Delphine,” I said. “And I have more experience of mesmerizations than anyone should have.”
Her brows rose almost to her hairline. “You know how to mesmerize? They taught you even though you’re not a Constantine?”
