Maybe I let myself forget, but I won’t let them see me cry.

“You know how I know it’s about race?” I whisper. “Because in this entire conversation, not one of you have mentioned why I am the Scion of Arthur in the first place. Why I have his blood in my veins.”

Aldrich looks as if he’s choking on air. “Briana—”

“Crown Scion,” I correct.

His face flushes red. The next words seem to be ripped from his chest, like he’d never say them if I hadn’t forced him to. “We have heard the reports. This claim about how your bloodline came to be that of Arthur’s. It is an accusation without proof.”

Everything inside of me lights up in rage. Roars out of me in an anger so rich I can taste it. Fury so cold, I grow completely still with it—or else I might explode.

“There it is…” My voice, low and merciless, tears at the silence in the room. I see Vera’s hair, her voice. The suffering she carried, the suffering that followed, and led to me—her wound made weapon. “You don’t believe history is true. You won’t even admit it’s possible. That I am Arthur’s heir not by choice or honor, but by violence.”

The room freezes. Their arguments gone brittle. The air itself is desperate to hold me back, because I can break it, because I am the tip of the spear. The pain-sharpened blade.

“You won’t say it out loud, but I will,” I say. “I am the Scion of Arthur by rape. I am your proof.”

For a long, long moment my heart beats wildly as all six members of the High Council of Regents sit, silenced. A muscle twitches at the corner of Aldrich’s eye, but for the moment, even the Lord Regent holds his tongue.

Abruptly, Gabriel slams his hand on the table. “Is this Council to believe that Samuel Davis, the last true Scion of Arthur, would be so irresponsible?”

“ ‘True’? ‘Irresponsible’?” My lip curls back until my teeth are bared. “My mother was a Scion of Arthur. And my grandmother. Back eight generations!”

Cestra recovers in the only way she knows how, it seems: with a swipe at a fellow Council member. “Is it so hard to believe a man would be so… irresponsible, Regent Gabriel?” Something dangerous glints in her eye. “Samuel Davis’s disregard for a woman he considered his property is, perhaps, the most believable element of any of the stories this Council has heard thus far.”

“You will speak with respect, Cestra!” Gabriel narrows his eyes. “That man was a Scion—”

“Since when has a man’s title prevented his brutality instead of further emboldening it?” Cestra hisses.

Aldrich stands, smoothing his hands over his suit. “We need to make a decision about the problem before us, not a problem from two hundred years ago.”