13. Chapter 13 #3
"Yes," he says. "That's fair."
Security cleared my suite that morning.
Cleared is apparently a flexible word, because I'm still sleeping in Sophia's room tonight, there are two guards downstairs, and I'm not allowed to be alone up here. But they gave me access back, which is enough for what I need.
I send the messages before I can think too hard about any of them.
Twenty minutes later, I get everyone into my sitting room, which turns out to hold nine people extremely badly.
Sophia's on the couch, obviously. Declan's on the floor. Renzo's in the ugly chair. Freya's in the window seat. Torres is standing behind me with his hand at the small of my back and hasn't moved since I came in.
Luke's by the fireplace. Soren's in the doorway. And Ander is by the window with his arms folded, and I don't know who told him to come, and I notice that nobody's asked why he's here.
"Right," Sophia says. "You've got the face."
"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?"
Not this is what happens now . Not the briefing. Not the six-move plan.
"I don't know yet," I say.
"Then tell me when you do," Luke says.
Soren, from the doorway, says nothing at all — but he moves aside so Declan can get up, and when I glance at him he gives me one very small nod, and that's the whole of his contribution, and it's enough.
Ander hasn't moved from the window.
He's looking at me the way he looked at the card on my bed — completely still, working something out, and whatever it is, it isn't good news for him.
I know enough to understand this changes his situation. I don't know enough to understand how.
He catches me looking and turns his head away.
I get to the kitchen and Torres follows me.
"You okay?"
And this time I answer it.
"No."
He pulls me in, and I go, and I put my face into his shoulder and stop thinking about paper for the first time since ten o'clock.
"She was six," I say into his shirt.
"Yeah."
"Nobody knows her name. It isn't written down. They took her name off her before she was even—"
His arms tighten. "You're here because somebody didn't give up on a kid," he says. "That's what that is."
I stay there a bit longer.
When I come back out, Luke crosses the room and gathers me into his arms.
I go without thinking, pressing my face into his chest while his arms close around me hard enough that I can finally breathe properly.
His mouth brushes my ear.
"I want to keep you safe."
I pull back enough to look at him. "That's what you got from all that?"
"I haven't decided what else I got from all that yet."
Fair.
He pulls me back against him.
Sophia makes a noise from the couch.
I don't care even slightly.
"Better?"
"Marginally."
"I'll take marginally."
My phone goes at eight minutes past two.
It's an academy notice, forwarded from the Chancellor's office, and the subject line is nine words long.
Notification: Fourth House lineage — confirmation of surviving royal descent.
I read it twice.
And then, across the room, Luke's phone goes.
He takes it out. Looks at the screen. And I watch every single thing drain out of his face.
"That's my father," he says.
Soren's phone goes.
He looks at it and doesn't answer it.
Then Ander's starts, face-up on the windowsill where he put it down, buzzing against the paint.
"Well," I say. "That's probably fine."
Nobody laughs.