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"She killed her brothers and sisters and her father?"

"Well, in all fairness, he did execute theto check her power She was beco too popular with the ar story, Dad"

"You called me Dad" Roland smiled

"I wouldn’t read too much into it Were any of our fa nonviolent?"

"Your great-great-grandfather cured the Plague of the Godless It was a very virulent strain of influenza and it threatened to wipe out the huood to know"

"Of course, he felt obligated to do it, because your great-great-granduncle had unleashed it in the first place"

I just stared at him

"History provides us with vital lessons," Roland said "For example, I have no plans toas our agreeht take your throne?"

"No, I don’t want the heartbreak of having to kill you, Blossom"

Mm-hm "Heartbreak"

"You don’t trust me," he said

"No"

He smiled, and I realized that hat parental pride looked like He was proud because I had enough brains to anticipate that he could entrap me I wished he’d come with some sort of secret manual, so I would kno to deal with him

"So how shall we move forward?" he asked

"You could teach me here and now I need to know about the ifrits"

He paused for the briefest ofhim very carefully For some reason he really didn’t want to tell ood use of the ti to us Answer one ofwas ever sin of a child living in the house You had gone into the woods, but where were your belongings?"

So Hugh and Roland had a long chat before the Preceptor was exiled "Hugh didn’t look well enough Voron knew a clairvoyant" Her nauardian, and she no longer returnedbad to happen when he sent me out of the house, because whenever I went into the woods, I packedand buried it under the pines on a hill behind the house"

"But there had to be other signs of your existence," Roland said "A child’s life doesn’t si"