Ariock found Garrett sitting on a rocky outcrop in the middle of the ocean. It was beyond sight of land, utterly desolate. The frothing, crashing waves probably reflected how Garrett was feeling.

There were no other life sparks nearby. The powerful thrum of Evenjos was back in the city, where she was likely engaged in her usual healing services at the hospitals. She had clearly failed to put Garrett in a better mood.

Ariock dropped out of the sky.

Garrett jumped, then regained his composure. He gave Ariock a grouchy look. “It’s nice to have the biggest sphere of influence on the planet, isn’t it?”

“It makes you easy to locate,” Ariock agreed, sitting on the rock next to Garrett. Yeresunsa stood out like beacons to his sixth sense. He could pinpoint the intense spark of Evenjos or Garrett whenever they were within his sphere of influence, which was roughly the size of a solar system. They could not do likewise. If Ariock was around, then his overwhelming influence washed out their ability to sense life sparks.

And Ariock teleported so often these days—multiple times per day—it had become second nature for him to scout out a location before showing up. He ghosted with ease. It was a cinch to find someone as powerful as Garrett.

“Well, I don’t need a lecture.” Garrett gazed at the ocean as if it angered him. “I’m sorry I lost my temper. I’ll try to do better.”

“Thomas is my friend,” Ariock said. “He should be your friend, too.”

Garrett gave him a defiant glare full of unspoken rage. “I said I don’t need a lecture.”

Everything about Garrett’s body language told Ariock to leave. The old man was in a deadly mood. He was the epitome of barely contained brutality. It was plain that he wanted to kill things.

If left alone, he would probably teleport to some faraway fringe of the Torth Empire and murder a bunch of Torth, just to blow off steam. He did that, sometimes. He dutifully participated in every major battle, but sometimes he created his own mini-battles, going alone to dangerous dens full of Rosies or Servants. He took needless risks. The prison population was regularly refreshed with extra prisoners taken by Garrett. Some warriors called him a maverick, while others insinuated that he was rabid and dangerous.

“Why are you so angry?” Ariock asked.

Garrett rolled his eyes.

“I’m not going to lecture you.” Ariock had no desire to act like a parent, especially not to his own great-grandfather. “But we need to understand each other.”

Garrett huffed.

Ariock tapped his head. “You understand where I’m coming from, I’m sure. You can read minds. But I can’t read your mind. And you’re acting in ways that I don’t understand.”

He stopped short of accusing Garrett of acting like a Torth. But that was what bothered him the most. Garrett claimed to despise everything the Torth did, yet he was happy to treat Thomas like a slave. He accused the Torth of being evil brutes, yet he reveled in brutal violence. He hated the way Torth hoarded knowledge, yet he was secretive and cagey.

Garrett gave him a resentful look. “You’re not going to lecture me. You’re just going to sit there quietly and judge me?”

“Sorry.” Ariock tried to tone down his frustration.

“Go away,” Garrett said.

Ariock refused to budge.

He just wanted to understand his great-grandfather. Was that so much to ask? He refused to believe that his ally—his rescuer, his surrogate father, the Will of the prophecies—was insane or stupidly evil.

There must be a story behind Garrett’s simmering hatred. Thomas had implied as much.

“Will you tell me why you hate the Torth so much?” Ariock begged. “You once mentioned that your father killed your mother. Did you, um…” He hesitated, wishing he knew how to approach the subject with proper sensitivity. “Did you witness it?”

Usually, other people talked a lot more than Ariock did. The silence felt awkward to him.

“I don’t want to be intrusive,” Ariock said. “I won’t force you to tell me what happened. But you said you cared about me. You said we’re family. I just wonder why our supposed family bond is so completely one-sided.”

Garrett slumped.

Far below, the waves lapped at the rocks in a way that seemed mournful. The frothing rage had ebbed.

“You’ve seen every bad moment of my life,” Ariock said. “You’ve witnessed this.” He turned his arm over, displaying the scar of his suicide attempt. “You know exactly how I felt when I was alone in that arena. You were there when I hung, dying, from a metal cross in an alien desert.” He rested his hands on his lap. “I don’t know you at all. I don’t understand you.”

As Ariock spoke, he realized that the unequal balance of their knowledge made him uneasy.

Knowledge was power. The Torth were silent and expressionless for a reason. Their silence added to the power they held over slaves.

Garrett leaned his elbows on his knees, gazing at the vista of waves. “I don’t see what good telling my story will do,” he said in a weak voice. He actually sounded old. “Knowing what I went through won’t change anything. I’m still the person I am.”

“It will help me understand you,” Ariock said.

He really wanted that, he realized. Secrets were a barrier to trust. Whatever pains Garrett wanted to keep hidden, those were points of vulnerability. Those were things that mattered to him. If he shared those things, that would signify trust, and mutual respect, which was lacking in their family bond.

“The boy told you to ask me about my father,” Garrett muttered with suspicion. “Didn’t he?”

“I asked for his advice,” Ariock admitted. “But my questions are my own.”

“Fine.” Garrett’s shoulders hunched inward, defensive. “Yes, I had a rotten childhood. What would you expect? I had a monstrous Torth for a father.”

That was vague.

“What did he do to you?” Ariock asked.

Garrett avoided eye contact. He hunched even further, and Ariock realized, with some sympathy, that whatever Garrett had suffered, it still effected him very much. It shaped who he was.

“He was abusive,” Garrett said.

Ariock suspected that might be a severe understatement. Gently, cautiously, he tried to pry for more nuance. “Every day?”

Garrett laughed in a dark way that seemed to conceal an ocean of pain.

“Did you see him kill your mother?” Ariock gently asked.

Garrett shivered. Although he was an old man with a lot of power, he curled in on himself in a childlike way.

A lot of Garrett’s actions were childlike, now that Ariock thought about it. The uncontrollable rages were like that of a toddler. The need for control? That was also a quality that young children fought for.

“He smothered her,” Garrett said. “With his hands. Right after I was born. I wasn’t self-aware enough to remember, but he showed me, when I was older. He replayed the memory and forced me to watch. Over. And over.”

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Ariock sat back. He almost regretted asking.

But now that he had pried open the lid on Garrett’s secrecy, he wasn’t going to relent. They were talking about something meaningful. This was progress.

“How old were you, when he did that?” Ariock asked.

Garrett shrugged. “Three. Four. Five. I never knew my age, back then. I guess I don’t really know it now. It wasn’t like we celebrated birthdays.”

Very young.

Part of Garrett seemed to remain arrested in that stage of life. He had not had any maternal influence. Just that monster of a father. Except….

“Who raised you?” Ariock tried to figure it out. Surely an abusive Torth father would not nurture a baby?

Garrett gazed at the hazy horizon. “There were ‘mothers,’” he said in an emotionless tone. “One poor woman after another. Mostly, they were teenagers. Runaways. Or else they were looking for a job, or a man who would support them. He coaxed them into the house with gifts and fake promises.”

A coldness crept up Ariock’s spine.

“We lived on a bluff,” Garrett said. “There were thick woods, and no one could see our backyard. He buried them there. Unmarked graves, of course. After he was done abusing each one.”

A serial killer.

Ariock did not know why that surprised him. He should have expected it. He tried to shrug it off, to back away from the disturbing thought of who he was related to.

He was also related to at least two victims of that killer.

A little baby named Jonathan had been trapped in that house of terror. And before Jonathan was born, his pregnant mother had been trapped there.

Eidelwen. Ariock remembered her name. Jinishta had told him the tale, back before the Alashani underground got flooded and invaded. Eidelwen was a premier Yeresunsa warrior, impregnated by a Torth attacker. She had run away in order to protect her unborn baby. She was never seen again.

But she had survived for a while.

She was captured, her mind was probed, and the brute who had raped her realized that her memories would get him condemned. Instead of waiting for his brethren to throw him in the Isolatorium, that rapist had stolen Eidelwen out of the Isolatorium. He had taken off on a streamship with his pregnant victim.

On Earth, the rapist had posed as a human man with his pregnant wife.

Jonathan never saw his mother’s face. She was murdered after giving birth. Maybe she had made too much noise for her Torth “husband” to tolerate? Ariock had trouble imagining the family dynamics, such as they were.

Surely Jonathan had wanted to run away as soon as he grew old enough to walk?

And his very existence would have been a threat to his father. He could read minds. As an unwilling witness to criminal atrocities, surely he must have tried to stop his depraved monster of a father? He must have presented severe challenges to that rapist and serial killer.

“Why did he keep you alive?” Ariock felt a need to know.

Garrett seemed to collect his thoughts. After a while, he answered.

“I think there were two reasons. At the time, I was only aware of one. He craved an audience. Even though I disgusted him, even though he despised me … he kept coming up to my room in the attic, to show me what he had done.”

There was a peculiar sickness in that psychology, Ariock thought. Jonathan’s father had been like a child, too. He had wanted to show off. He had craved attention.

And wasn’t that endemic to all Torth?

They were raised to expect the presence of an audience inside their minds. That was their sole measure of self-worth. A Torth without the Megacosm—without an audience—was an exile. Hunted. Doomed. They had no status, no rank, and no hope.

Ariock saw penitent work crews, and they looked wretched. He saw Torth prisoners, dead-eyed and suicidal. Millions of exiled Torth survived within the cities he controlled, except they were no longer Torth, really. They lacked power. They could not command slaves. They were, in fact, slaves themselves.

Jonathan’s father had been one like that.

Only he had been rogue, not under anyone’s control.

“He dared not confide in anyone,” Garrett went on. “Except for me. I was the only person in his life who had his power to read minds. So I suppose he saw me as a potential equal, in a sick sort of way. As for the other reason … I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was trying to shape me. He wanted an heir.”

Garrett cringed, saying that.

An heir to what? Ariock wondered. Had Jonathan’s nameless father wanted to create a junior serial killer?

“Family is a decadence that most Torth don’t get a chance to indulge in,” Garrett explained. “It’s against their laws. But the monster who raised me was all about indulging in illegal decadences. I was just another trophy. Like the women he enslaved and then killed.”

Ariock had trouble imagining a child as a trophy.

“Most Torth donate gametes to baby farms,” Garrett said. “They never get to shape the lives of their offspring. They rarely even know who their offspring are. My father must have figured that since he was an exile, he would do whatever he wanted. That included raising his very own son.”

What a strange inclination, for a Torth.

Ariock wondered if Jonathan’s father had been capable of a full range of emotions. Had he felt anything for his child? What about the unwilling Alashani victim who had been forced to pose as his wife?

Was she the only victim he had impregnated?

“As far as I know,” Garrett said, “I’m his only child. Although I can’t be sure, can I? I don’t know every detail of what he was doing. His visits were infrequent. He may not have showed me everything.”

Ariock imagined other unwanted children like Jonathan Stead, unaware of their half-siblings.

Had they grown up? Had they raised families of their own?

Did Ariock have a whole lot of super-powered cousins on Earth?

“Yeresunsa powers can lay dormant over a lifetime,” Garrett said, responding to his thoughts. “So I suppose it’s possible that we might have a bunch of human cousins descended from my father. But I judge it unlikely. Torth genetics are rife with wildcard mutations.” He gently nudged Ariock. “One of them would have inherited some strangeness, like your growth disorder.”

Ariock swallowed, remembering how many times he had thought himself cursed.

Maybe someone else on Earth was suffering from too much uniqueness right now, the way he had.

“And to answer your other unspoken question,” Garrett said, “yes, my father had a full range of emotions, for sure. He was a Yeresunsa. We all have strong emotions. It’s tied to having powers.”

Ariock felt chilled, imagining how outmatched the young Jonathan had been. “He was a Yeresunsa?”

“A Servant of All,” Garrett confirmed. “But I got lucky.” He tapped his head. “He never imagined that I might inherit powers from her, as well as from him. He never bothered to learn who she really was.”

Jonathan, aka Garrett, had the full suite of powers, Ariock remembered. He must have had at least one or two powers that his father lacked.

“How did you…” Ariock paused. It seemed rude to ask how young Jonathan had survived. Yet it was an important question. How did a very young child survive among caretakers who inevitably became victims of a serial killer? Had those victims resented the cherished son of their tormentor?

Had they understood that he could read minds, like their abuser?

Had they feared him, even though he was a child?

Garrett gazed at the banded planet on the horizon. He must be able to overhear Ariock’s unasked questions, yet he did not volunteer any answers.

This was a sensitive subject. That made it all the more important for Ariock to hear the truth.

He took a risk and asked, “How did you survive?”

“Everything you’ve guessed,” Garrett said, without looking at him, “is accurate. They despised me. They believed my father was a demon from Hell, and I was another unholy demon. I learned to disguise my power to read minds, since that really made them uncomfortable. I learned to act harmless and helpless. But you know what? It barely made any difference. I knew they were doomed. There was nothing I could do to help them. So I … I couldn’t get attached to them.”

Ariock could hardly imagine the toxic environment that his great-grandfather had grown up in. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“There was one.” Garrett paused, and when he went on, there was a pained hitch in his voice. “Anna Stead.”

“Stead?” Ariock wondered if he had misheard.

“Yes.” Garrett shivered. “I haven’t spoken her name in a long time. But she deserves to be remembered. She showed me kindness.”

“I’m sorry.” Ariock hoped that particular caretaker had not suffered.

“I was in love with her sister,” Garrett said.

“What?”

“She had a little sister,” Garrett said. “Julia. I saw her in the mind of Anna. I used to ghost to the Stead household, to see how normal people lived. The route was easy for me. They were just down the road. We were neighbors. Julia loved books.” Warmth came into his tone as he remembered. “I ghosted to Julia as often as possible. Every day. Multiple times per day. I know it sounds creepy and voyeuristic, but I was desperate to experience a happy, normal childhood, even if it was by proxy.”

Julia. Ariock did not recognize the name, but he heard wistful love and longing in Garrett’s voice. This was someone who had mattered to him.

“I grew up with her,” Garrett said in a tone of admission. “I read books over her shoulder. That’s how I learned to read.”

Ariock imagined it: a lonely, frightened, abused little boy, able to escape his own body by becoming a ghost. Of course he had visited so-called normal people.

“The Stead family were everything I yearned for,” Garrett said. “I would have gone through any pain, taken any risk, for a hope of being adopted by that family. I loved every one of them. Julia especially, but I loved Anna as well.”

The pain of loss was in his voice. He had gotten attached to his caretaker, even knowing that she was likely to become just another victim of his murderous father.

“What happened to Anna?” Ariock dared to ask.

“She wanted to smuggle me out of the house.” Garrett gave an indirect reply, perhaps caught up in the memories. “The trouble was, I couldn’t walk.” He tapped his crooked leg. “This was broken in multiple places. It healed wrong, since I was never taken to a doctor.”

Few Yeresunsa could mend old scars or other traits. That sort of in-depth regeneration healing required Evenjos’s six magnitude healing power, so Ariock understood why Garrett had been unable to fully straighten out his crooked leg.

But how had the leg been shattered in the first place? Ariock wasn’t sure how to phrase such an intrusive question.

“I got thrown down a flight of stairs.” Garrett said that as if it was no big deal. “Because I wanted to leave the attic and see what fresh air felt like. I was five or six years old, starved and bedridden, extra vulnerable. My father didn’t care.”

Ariock stared at Garrett anew. He was so used to his great-grandfather as a capable warrior, he could not imagine him as a bedridden child.

“Some of my so-called ‘mothers’ kept me tied to the filthy cot I slept in,” Garrett said in that offhand tone. “They were afraid of me. A demon child. That’s what I was. My father commanded that they take care of me, so they fed me oatmeal, but mostly, they went nowhere near me. They didn’t touch me.”

Unloved. Unwanted. Ariock wanted to rescue that child, himself.