Petyr stared at Avesta, hardly able to make sense of what he’d heard.

  Even the forest around them seemed to have quieted down after her mad declaration.

  “You’re not serious,” he said.

  Avesta glared at him from under her eyebrows. “This is your response? You wanted the truth, you’ve received it.”

  “You’re saying your father is the ruler of the Soverni Republic? As in, the top dog? The one giving out all the orders?”

  She laughed and crossed her arms. “Is that what you think ruling is about? Giving out orders?”

  “Am I wrong?”

  Avesta thought it over and shrugged. “I suppose that’s what it’s supposed to be. But it’s not always what it is…”

  Petyr noticed that she fell quiet, her head lowered in dejection. She raised a hand up to rub her temple as if a great migraine had set in at the same time as she opened the mental drawers that held some unhappy memories.

  Suddenly, she grabbed her hair and…

  … pulled it off.

  The brown bob in her grip hung limp and lifeless. A tumble of golden waves crashed all along her as she shook her head violently.

  “Blonde hair,” Petyr said with a chuckle. Of course. Wasn’t that exactly what his father had said when he mentioned seeing a woman stalking the house? That he’d specifically seen a blonde woman?

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  I completely forgot about that.

  “You know enough now where there’s no point for me to wear that when you’re around,” Avesta said. “But know this, you also know so much that if you betray my trust, I’m going to end your life.”

  “You’ve made that clear before…”

  Somehow, as surprising as these two revelations had been, it did make him feel better. At least he was getting somewhere. “So what were you saying about your father?”

  “My father is… not himself as of late. He has not been himself for a very long time, in fact. I suspect much of it has to do with certain people that have been influencing him.”

  “Certain people?”

  Avesta ran a hand through her unleashed blonde locks and sighed bitterly. “A circle of sycophants with ulterior motives. I suppose you can call them a cult. Or an interest group, if you look at it through a financial lens. It really doesn’t matter what you refer to them as. The only thing of relevance here is that they’ve seized my father’s mind and, with it, the Soverni Republic.”

  “They’re mind-controlling him?”

  Avesta laughed and placed a hand over her stomach. “Mind-control? You’re such a child. No, it’s nothing of the sort. Just the typical preying on weakness.”

  “Your father is a weak man?”

  Avesta’s eyebrow arched up pointedly. “Everyone has a weakness of some kind. A soft spot. There are no exceptions. For some, it’s a relationship. For others, it’s a sense of safety. A few value their ego and pride above all else. I’m sure there’s a long inexhaustible list. So to answer your question, no, my father is not a weak man; but he is a man.”

  Petyr sensed he himself had hit a soft spot with that line of questioning, but he thought better than to point it out. “And this group… this cult… they’re connected to what’s going on here?”

  Avesta smiled unhappily. “In every way possible. But we’ll talk about that later. For now, you need to hold up your end of the bargain, Petyr.”

  He braced himself as she stepped closer, his heart pounding as he readied himself for the inevitable words to follow. “We need to speak to your father," said Avesta. "To Squeezer."