She turns to Price—Zach—looking for a clue as to what to say. All she sees in his eyes is sadness and resignation, as if this was the moment he’s been dreading.

“Ah, but you do,” Eric Elysian says. “When you were a child, barely four, I believe, your father was killed.”

Lynell’s attention snaps back to him. “How did you know that?”

Eric smirks. “I know a lot about you. I know, for example, that your father wrote you a letter before he died.”

All the food she just ate is no longer settling easily in her stomach. How would Eric Elysian know her father? Much less know that he wrote a letter to her, a letter she read so often her mom suggested she memorize it. Her father was no one. Just a nameless, faceless man who, if her mother could be believed, loved her but never got to know her.

“Why do you care?” she asks. “I didn’t even know the man, so why would a letter he wrote to his bastard child matter to you, one of the most powerful men in the country?”

Mr. Elysian drags his finger along the top of his wine glass, his eyes firmly trained on her. “You may not have known him, but I did. I knew your father well.”

“What?” Lynell gasps. She grips her dress under the table, body tensing with the shock of it.

He was a king, her mom used to say, but Lynell had long since decided that her mom had made that up to comfort a scared and abandoned child. But if Eric Elysian, the closest thing to a king this country ever had, knew her father, then maybe her mom was not so wrong after all.

Eric nods. “Yes, your dad and I were quite close once. And I would bet anything he secretly hid the code inside the contents of the letter he wrote you all those years ago.”

“What, no, he—” Lynell begins.

Eric leans back in his chair, holding up his hand. “I know without a shadow of a doubt that your father had this key. He was the only person who did, and not only that, he also knew he was going to die soon. He would never let such important information die with him. And the only person he would entrust it to is you.”

Lynell is already shaking her head. “I was a child. And he didn’t know me. Why would he trust me with anything?”

“Because you are his child. It is tradition to pass it down through the family. Your father got the code from his father.” Eric taps the table in a rhythmic pattern, starting with his pointer finger and ending with his pinky. The sound grates on Lynell’s nerves.

The palms of her hands are clammy, so she rubs them against the dress, trying to dry off any sweat. “You’re telling me that this man had information so important that you, of all people, want it and he what? He wrote a letter to a child he didn’t know so he could hide some code, hoping I would one day decipher it and know what to do with it?” Something about the preposterous idea fills her with some much-needed confidence. She sits up taller and meets Eric’s stare.