"How is that possible? Whose child am I then?"
The Emperor sighed.
"Understand, Byron, that even I did not know the truth of the whole thing until a decade later, and you were already almost ten. It was such a tangled web of subversions and lies that it literally rotted from the inside out." He shook his head.
"I don't understand Father." Byron shook his head.
The Emperor sighed again. "You all know that Clarissa has an identical twin sister." He rubbed his eyes with weary hands. "I can vouch for the fact that it is impossible to tell the difference between them in the dark."
"What?" The Princes all gasped.
Ray Torra cleared his throat. "What your Father is trying to say in polite terms is that in order to ensure that a male be born first to capture the Crown Prince position, the twins switched sleeping arrangements on a regular basis, with the understanding that any male child would be Clarissa's son, the Crown Prince."
"So my mother and my aunt switched babies." Byron's voice was hoarse. "That means Poppy…"
"Poppy is our blood sister, just as much as Lyra, Daisy, and Ariana are our blood sisters." Dante confirmed. "The only difference is that she is a legitimate Princess, whereas you are born to a woman who is not legally married to the Emperor."
Byron's eyes watered.
He had gone from the shining Crown Prince of the Erenveil Empire to a mere illegitimate son of the Emperor.
"Why Father? Why did you not say anything?"
The Emperor took a deep breath.
"Because I love all my children. For me to reveal what I found out, years after everything had already been settled would have destroyed you, and I loved you too much to hurt you."
"Although I did not marry your real mother, you are still very much my beloved biological son."
His eyes grew tragic. "Unfortunately, Poppy did not take it well. She disowned her family and ran away from home when she was sixteen to join the space pirates because she knew she had been thrown away by her own mother.
"I tried to reach out to her but she rejected me too." He sighed and brushed a tear from his eyes. "My poor daughter. She should have been living alongside Lyra and Daisy and Ariana, enjoying her Princess life. Instead, she is out there every day, fighting alongside Slate and his men…"
"And doing an amazing job, Father." Slate confirmed. "She's a better fighter than most of my men. In fact, she trained many of them."
Byron staggered and slumped back onto his seat. All fight leaving his body.
"Wait. This makes no sense." Candi waved a hand.
"How is it that the Avgo contestants aren't allowed to be pregnant before the Avgo event, but Byron was allowed to have a birthdate that clearly shows the Empress would have had to be pregnant before the conclusion of the Event?"
The Emperor gave her a sad gaze.
"Rules are created and maintained by the winners. This is a lesson to you, Child. Once you are safely ensconced on the throne, you can change whatever rules don't fit with your needs."
"So Anastasia could have changed that pregnancy rule if she hadn't given up the Empress crown?"
The Emperor shook his head. "In the case of Anastasia, she did the only thing that she could do. She gave it up to ensure her world would not be attacked. That goes far beyond the situation with her pregnancy."
Candi shook her head. "But Ray Torra said that Anastasia gave up the crown to protect her world because the bird worlds surrounded an insectoid world. Does that mean…"
"Where did Anastasia come from?" Candace asked, almost afraid of the answer.
Dante turned to Candace with a proud look.
"She's a beautiful blue butterfly from the world of Nymphalidae."
Candi almost forgot to breathe. Dante was part insectoid…
Dante compressed his lips as he saw Candace's shocked expression. Not her too…
She suddenly turned to him. "No wonder you are so beautiful."
Dante's heart overflowed and he nearly cried. She didn't think any less of him because he was part insectoid.
Candace looked at the other Princes with the same curious gaze.
"Our mother is a golden blonde lioness." Leonardo smiled.
"And ours is a mermaid." Jason volunteered.
Candi's jaw dropped. She would have never thought Jason and Jared were part mermen.
She glanced over at Slate.
"Black Wolf." He grinned.
Candi's eyes nearly popped out of her skull. Slate was part wolf???
She shook her head. "I don't understand. Why is it that you all look so human?"
"It's the basic biological structure that the royal family is all deviated from." Ray Torra explained.
"Remember the Avgo rule of having to remain in human form to compete? This is the reason why, and part of the reason the pink Avgo only shows up every once in a great while."
"Once in awhile, the pink Avgo is released to reinforce and re-infuse the royal family's genetics with pure human genes."
"Royal family genetics?" Candi shook her head. This was all so confusing.
"We're all blood bats, Cancandi." Leonardo explained. "Bats are the royal genetics."
"Yes." Dante nodded. "We are considered royalty because bat genes are so dominant that any female who bears our children will always and only ever have bat children. This is not true for any other species of humans out there."
"So if I marry one of you men," she mused out loud.
"All your babies will be bat babies with golden blonde hair and bat wings that can actually fly." Leonardo laughed.
Candi pressed her lips together, not sure what to think about the idea that her children would be bats.
"But I thought Earth had never been in Avgo Events before."
Ray Torra shook his head. "Earth hasn't. But although there aren't that many human worlds, you of the human race are spread out far wide and there have been other human females who have been a part of the Avgo, and have even won."
"The woman whose grave you plundered was one such human." Ray grinned, showing all his teeth.
"She's not from Earth?"
"Not originally, no, but her world is primarily human-based just as Earth is. She was there as a paleontologist to study life springing from Earth when she died due to a freak accident."
Ray's eyes were dark.
"She was buried on Earth because she loved that world so much and had put into her will that it was where she wanted to be buried." He turned to look at Candi.
"I think she knew that sooner or later, another human female would be chosen, so she took with her, the Ellipsoidal Macrocosm to be given to that new chosen female as a guide book."
"You dug up grandma and got the guide book before you even got your hands on the Avgo gemstone." Lucas laughed.
"I'm so sorry." Candi sighed.
"Don't be. I think this is the first time that an Avgo gemstone was chosen by the female, and not the other way around."
"So what do we do now?"
Byron's somber dejected voice cut through all the chatter about genetics.