Page 39 of Legacy Elite

Nobody explains the Dr.

I file all of it.

They summarize the shift evidence for the record without making me sit through it again. Faculty statements. Voss's assessment, which apparently includes the phrase no observed instability, and I would like that framed.

Nobody argues that I wasn't a direwolf.

That question closed in a clearing in April with too many qualified people standing in it.

"Then here's the difficulty," Wren says, and sets the folder down. "Our history says the royal line of the Fourth House was destroyed. Our history also says the direwolf form only ever occurred in that line. Both have been settled fact for over two hundred years."

She looks at me.

"They can't both be true. You're sitting in the chair."

Nobody moves.

"So either somebody survived and we missed it. Or what we believe about direwolves is wrong."

"Okay." My hands are flat on my knees. "What have you got?"

"You. Verified. You're who you say you are, born where you say, to your parents, and every document we've pulled is consistent."

"That's it?"

"Yes."

I wait.

Nobody fills it in. Fine.

"Which side is it? Mom's or Dad's?"

"We don't know."

"When did the line leave Europe?"

"We don't know."

"Do you know how they got to America? Ship, port, year, anything?"

"No."

"Do you know how a family that was killed to the last person managed not to be?"

"No."

"Do you know why nobody in mine ever knew a single thing about it?"

"No."

I sit back.

"Jesus Christ," I say. "What did you do all summer?"

Somebody in the staff rows makes a noise and turns it into a cough.

"Confirmed you exist," Wren says. "Which took four months and a great many separate authorities." She doesn't soften it. "Nobody has gone looking for a survivor of that House in centuries, Miss Miller. There was no reason to. Everyone was certain."