Page 146 of Legacy Elite

My aunt looks at me for a moment. She listens with her head slightly tipped, which I've been told more than once I do as well.

"You're her mate, Lucian."

"I'm aware."

"You've had eight months of private conversations with the one person in this whole business whose intentions nobody can establish. And you don't know what she wants."

"She doesn't know yet."

"You expect me to believe that."

"Yes." I sit back. "Eighteen months ago she didn't know wolves existed. Everyone in this room has had a lifetime to work out what the Fourth House means. She's had months, and most of them she's spent in meetings about herself."

"Until yesterday," my father says.

"Until yesterday."

"So what changed?"

"Six doses and a net," I say.

Nobody answers that.

Then Isolde says, "She made a claim."

"She asked to read her family's papers."

"Those aren't different things in Council law, Lucian, and you know that better than most people in the chamber." She isn't being cruel. She's being exact, which is worse. "She has invoked her status as the Fourth House heir to demand access to sealed Fourth House material. It's an affirmative act. It's the first one she's taken. And it will be recorded as one, because there's no other way to record it."

"I told her that."

They both look at me.

“Before she said it,” I say. “I told her that once she asked, she'd have asked, and she wouldn't be able to make it small afterwards.”

“And?”

“She asked anyway.”

Isolde leans back. “If they open the records, somebody will raise restoration.”

“Of course they will.”

“And the seat.”

“Probably before the records are even open.”

“Property will take longer.”

That one I don't answer. Property means two hundred years of land changing hands under the assumption that the Fourth House was dead. Nobody wants to be the first person to touch that.

“None of which she wants,” I say.

“None of which she has to want,” Isolde says. “That's the difficulty. Whether she claims anything or not, other people will act on what she might.”

Which is what I told Jessica in my rooms in October, and she told me I was managing her, and she was right about that too.

"So what does Draeven want?"