Page 43 of Legacy Elite

"You held up well," he says.

"I basically bit my tongue."

"That was correct today." He puts his hands in his pockets and doesn't smile. "It won't be correct forever, and nobody is going to tell you when that changes."

"Is he the only one who thinks that?"

Caspian looks up at the emptying benches.

"No," he says.

He doesn't elaborate. Then he tells me to give his nephew hell, and goes.

Werrow is at the doors with her coat already on, waiting for somebody.

"Thank you," I say.

She nods, "They'll find something eventually."

"And then what?"

Dr. Werrow glances back at the chamber.

"Then this gets worse."

Torres is outside on the steps with his hands jammed in his jacket, and he's been there the whole time, and I know that because his ears are red.

Sophia's on the wall beside him, swinging her legs. Declan's a step down with his arms folded. Freya's against the railing, not saying anything, which is Freya's whole personality.

"Are you a princess?" Sophia says.

"Still pending."

"That's not a no."

"It's not a yes either."

I sit down on the wall. Torres puts his shoulder against mine and doesn't ask me anything.

"So what happened?"

"They don't know."

"Know what?"

"Anything." I push my hair back. "They know I turned into a direwolf. They know what the books say that means. That's the end of the list."

"They've had all summer," Declan says.

"They've had all summer to confirm I'm me. That's what they've got. My birth certificate is real." I laugh and it comes out wrong. "They don't know which side. They don't know when anybody left Europe or where they went or when they reached America. They don't know how a family that was killed to the last person managed not to be. Nobody can explain why mine never knew."

Nobody says anything.

Because we all assumed. Every one of us has spent four months assuming there was a room full of adults somewhere who had this handled.

"One of them told me to go home," I say.

Torres goes very still against my shoulder.