Page 104 of Legacy Elite

"Apparently I'm officially extinct royalty now," I say.

Silence.

"They found the line."

And the room comes apart.

"WHAT."

"How?" Renzo says over the top of her. "There was a hundred-and-fifty-year hole, you can't just—"

So I tell them. The inventory. The four words. A registration five months later with a seven-year-old on it. A guardian signing a marriage record eleven years on. Four generations of daughters under four different names. A son in a register. Emil on the boat.

Freya has come off the window seat and is standing over the coffee table like she can see the documents on it.

"How certain?" she says.

"Faris agreed."

Freya goes very still.

"Oh," she says.

"Yeah."

"Faris?" Sophia says.

"She said the evidence meets the historical standard," I say. "In a normal voice. With her glasses off."

"Oh my God," Sophia says, and sits down slowly, which for Sophia is the equivalent of fainting.

Declan hasn't said anything about any of it.

"How are you?" he asks.

And that's Declan, and it undoes me slightly, and I have to look at the carpet for a second.

"I don't know," I say.

Torres's hand moves an inch up my back.

"Okay," he says.

I turn my head. "Okay?"

"You're still Jess."

"That's it? That's your entire response?"

"That's my response to the royalty." He looks past me at Luke, and something passes between the two of them that I don't like at all. "My question's different. Does this make the threat worse?"

"Yes," Luke says.

He's been quiet this whole time. Very quiet. And I know exactly what's going on behind his face, because he is the heir of a House that has held a third of everything for two centuries and somebody has just told him the fourth one isn't dead.

He straightens off the fireplace.

And what he says is, "What do you need?"