“How nice for you,” I said. “Where is Adrian?! You better not hurt him—he’s a Pure Royal and you’ll have your asses handed to you by the queen, let alone what I’ll do to you.”

I got nothing but perfect calmness in response, which only made me angrier. “We’re not here to hold you hostage or harm you or your friend.” Leaning forward, Drake placed his elbows on top of his knees and added, “I am here because there’s something I want to discuss with you. Something important.”

“Hate to break it to you, buddy, but keeping someone against their will is kidnapping. If this is official Court business, take me to headquarters!”

Drake continued as if I hadn’t said a word. “You’ve spent your entire life being a Regular.”

“Thanks, Sherlock. Tell me something I don’t already know.”

“But you aren’t. You are not a Regular.”

Hope sparked inside of me; perhaps I was not a Hellenicus. Maybe this was all just a mistake and I didn’t have a soul-mate bond to break after all! Maybe I was already free. “Are you saying I’m a Nescient?”

“No.” My new hope was immediately crushed and the confusion returned. Officer Warwick passed Commander Drake a file, which immediately piqued my curiosity. But before he opened it, Drake dropped a bomb: “You’re not a Nescient, and you’re not a Regular. You are a Pure Royal.”

“No, Drake, I’m most certainly not a Pure Royal. I can’t be. You clearly haven’t met my parents—they’re as Regular as the sunrise.”

“Avery, you are not a Montgomery,” Drake said.

My face showed the complete and utter befuddlement I felt. I had seen my birth certificate; I knew who I was, but I decided to play along with his strange, elaborate prank. “Then who am I?”

“You are Camila Stavros.”

I broke into a fit of giggles. Drake looked at me as if I had just lost my sanity, while I thought he was the insane one. “Impossible,” I said. “The Stavroses are extinct.”

Drake shook his head slowly as if he was trying to explain to a five-year-old that humans could not fly. “As you know, most of the Stavroses were killed during the Great Massacre, and the rest were slowing picked off in the generations afterward. But you are the last of the surviving Stavroses. The only one to survive the Faction.” He opened the file and handed it to me. “This is your real birth certificate.”

Camila Reanna Stavros was on the first paper of the file. There were more details about this Camila—all the usual data on a birth certificate. “Just because you show me a piece of paper and tell me that I’m this person, you think I’m going to believe you?” I said.