She was nurse to my brother, Juridius, as well, though once he was old enough, he was moved to the main house. I grew up in an outbuilding on the grounds of the Villa Suterpe, my nurse, Melisande, keeping me alive through my infancy and continuing to care for me as I grew older. She held my naming ceremony in the great temple, with free wine and food for all who attended, and only after that turned me over to the nurse of her own childhood, never to show any interest in me again. Knowing it would anger her father, she arranged for a wet nurse and recorded my birth in the capital. When it became clear that I had been born with the infirmity that ran in my family, she declined the conventional response, and not because of any maternal feelings. She was far more his child than either of her surviving brothers, and she hated him for casting her out. Resenting her restriction to family life on a Susa country estate, she entertained a steady stream of visitors from the capital who brought her all the news of the court, of the queen, and of her father’s many machinations. My father was an uncomplicated, easygoing man, and I have never known what drew the two of them together, as my mother was ambitious enough for two, and far more conniving. My mother, the only daughter of the Baron Erondites, was disowned when she married herself to a younger son of the Susa family. Though I was born to the house of Susa, I am Erondites.
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