him for months he finally told me where to find my real family.
“I disguised myself and went to see them in the heat of the evening. I spied on them and discovered that the man who was my true father was a drunkard. He abused his wife and his other children, my sisters. Soon after, the rumor was that my family had left. In a drunken rage my father had killed my mother and then sold his progeny off to various traders who paid him in drink.
“Again I felt not outrage. Not sorrow. Instead I felt the sweet joy of relief. My mother and my sisters would never try to come find me. They were gone.”
“Oh, Asten,” I said, and stretched out a hand to him, but he stepped away.
“I’d done nothing to help her. My real mother died as a result of my fear, my complacency. My cowardice has been my shadow all these years. The boy, the prince I was, disappeared, and in his place was a doppelganger, a changeling, who was truly loved by no one, wanted by no one, and missed by no one. When I died, my final thought was that I could finally be at peace knowing it no longer mattered whose son I was.”
Asten turned to Ahmose, who stood frozen in place, his hands at his side, an expression of shock on his face. “Do you see, Ahmose? I am not your brother. I am not the man who was destined to do this work.” He looked at Anubis. “What I am is a fraud. When I confessed as much to Anubis after he took us away from our homes to explain our new roles, he told me it was too late. He’d already imbued me with his power. There was no taking it back.” Asten lifted his arms, palms up, as if sacrificing himself on the battlefield. “I was the son of a bricklayer”—he almost spat the word—“raised by a king and queen who, even at the end of their mortal lives, had no idea that their son was an imposter.”
Glancing at me, Asten said, “That is why I was desperate to help the queen, the woman I called Mother, though she wasn’t mine, have another child. Even though the witch who helped me with the potion haggled for a price that was…unthinkable, I felt I had no choice. At the time I thought that if she might have another son, I could quietly disappear and he could rule.
“And now you know the whole sordid tale.” Asten held up his hand and ticked the list of his mistakes off his fingers. “I’ve lied. I’ve deceived others, almost all my life. I’ve killed. I’ve been selfish. I’ve stood by and done nothing to confront the abuse of my own flesh and blood. I’ve cast the innocent in prison. Banished the blameless. I’ve usurped the life of a royal prince, one destined to do great things. And I was paranoid about losing my position every hour of every day. I’m called a Son of Egypt, the Prince of Waset, and yet I am unworthy of those titles. Where my brothers are silver, I am a stone. They are tall cedar trees and I am the common sycamore.”
I covered my mouth with my hand to stifle a sob. How could Asten have kept these things hidden deep within his heart all this time? He was good at wearing a mask. I would never have guessed how dark his thoughts were. How much he’d buried behind his self-confident grin.
“Is there anything more?” Ma’at asked, her face still fixed in a neutral expression.
Asten thought for a moment and then nodded. “We spoke of Amon’s true name and I don’t even know mine. What name did my birth mother call me? What kind of legacy could I have possibly had if my own mother gave me up for money and my father sold his own offspring? All that I am is a pretense. I’ve used my prodigious legacy to build up a wall of deception so high and strong there is no way to topple it.”
When the echo of his words faded, the only sound in the room was the rise and fall of our breaths. The slight sound of the scale shifting caught my attention. Ma’at glanced at it and narrowed her eyes, studying the movement for a time. I held my breath as the scale rose and fell, and finally it settled with the heart a