Betrayed by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #5)(64)

“Well, I guess Haman probably didn’t stay in Ballos’s house the whole time,” I said dryly, “or he never would have met my mother.”

“No, I imagine not,” Janta agreed with a sigh. She pushed her spectacles up her nose, then flipped over several notes of research until she came upon a photograph of a man who resembled Coman. He had thick, curling dark hair that brushed his broad shoulders, and his handsome, aristocratic features shared the shape of my eyes and my full mouth. He wore some kind of ceremonial robe with a thick chain across his chest, and looked as though everything he surveyed belonged to him. Smug bastard. So this was supposed to be my father? I wanted to deny it, but the resemblance was unmistakable.

Janta did not notice my reaction. “Ballos cannot have been very stimulating company for a comparatively young mage, used to exclusive parties and entertainments. And perhaps Haman enjoyed the anonymity of a foreign place where nobody knew his ancestry, where he thought he could let his hair down safely.”

Yeah, I could imagine that.

“I surmise that your father visited Rowanville during his stay here, as many tourists do. The experience must have been especially exotic for him, as there are no shifters in Castalis.”

That shocked me. “What—none at all?”

“There never were all that many, and one of Haman’s ancestors, the High Mage of that time, drove them from the country about two hundred years ago. They were given one week to leave, taking only what they could carry. It is in all the Castalian history books.”

“No wonder none wanted to go back,” I muttered. Already, I hated the whole f*cking ar’Rhea family.

“It is said the edict was issued in anger at an affair of his daughter with a shifter. The daughter was also exiled.”

My cheeks burned hot with anger, and it was all I could to do hold my tongue. Somehow, this knowledge made Haman’s affair with my mother even worse.

“Be that as it may,” Janta said briskly, after clearing her throat, “Haman must have run into your mother somehow, then engaged in an affair. There is no way to prettify it—his actions were most reprehensible.”

“Affairs between consenting adults are common enough,” I admitted reluctantly. I was definitely not entitled to cast the first stone there, and my mother had been older than Haman. But the fact that he’d abandoned me, his child…

“Yes, but what makes it so dishonorable,” Janta lowered her voice, “is not the affair as such, but that he was engaged at the time.”

“What?” I leaned forward, gripping the arms of my chair tightly. I’d known it was highly likely that my father had a family of his own by now, but the idea that he’d dallied with my mother when he’d been promised to another stung. “He had a fiancée?”

“Indeed,” Janta confirmed, disapproval clear in her voice. “As you are aware, betrothals between mages are an extremely serious matter, and even more so in his case. His bride, and current wife, was the daughter of the former High Mage of Castalis. For the last ten years, Haman himself has held that office. Those two families have more or less monopolized the power in Castalis for several centuries.”

I snorted—I could easily see how the other mages in Castalis chafed under that cozy arrangement, not to speak of the humans.

“I can only imagine your mother must have been very alluring to Haman,” Janta went on, “because jeopardizing his future marriage and career through an affair with a shifter was an extremely foolhardy move. He must have taken great pains to hide his relationship with her, so that neither his own family nor his betrothed’s would ever find out.”

“I guess that explains why my clan never knew who he was,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely certain that Mafiela didn’t know my father’s identity. She and my mother had been very close. “So he returned home and married the woman he was engaged to?”

“Yes, Lady Aria Ragir,” Janta confirmed. “They married the year you were born, and have three children now.” She pulled an article from a celebrity Northia magazine in Dara and pushed it across the table to me. “Here is a picture of them.”

I looked down at the well-dressed family, standing on the front steps of the Capitol Building with Zavian Graning, the Federation Minister. My father’s wife was a stunning woman with almond-shaped eyes and dark skin, who must have had Sandian ancestry somewhere, and their children shared a healthy mixture of both their traits. Two daughters and a son. I couldn’t tell their eye color from the black-and-white photo, of course, but the lightness of their irises suggested they had green eyes, just like mine. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the idea that I had half-siblings running around, halfway across the world somewhere.

“What would happen if the truth of my parentage came out?” I asked, pushing the article back to Janta. “If some journalist discovered that Haman ar’Rhea is my father? Would it be a big deal?”

“Well, as I said, Haman is the High Mage of Castalis—the equivalent of a Chief Mage, except that Castalis is one country and not split up into different states like the Federation. That means he technically outranks Lord Iannis, though Canalo is just as big. He wasn’t the High Mage when he was here in Solantha, as his father-in-law had not stepped down from the position, but he was being groomed for the job. It would have been a terrible scandal if it had come out he had an illegitimate daughter with a shifter. His brother, Daram, would have almost certainly gotten the position instead of him, and he would not have been married to his lovely and extremely wealthy bride.”