“Wait a minute!” Raisa raised her hand, palm out, to stop him. “Even if he had some relationship to the line, there’s no way he could be in the direct descendancy.”

“Queen Alyssa had a twin brother,” Elena said.

“A twin brother?” Raisa shook her head. “No. Alyssa was an only child, the daughter of Hanalea and that consort she married after the Breaking—what was his name?” She should know; she’d studied this history for too long.

“Alyssa’s twin was named Alister,” Averill said.

“Alister! Why have I not heard of him?” Raisa looked at her grandmother, her father.

“Alister was gifted,” Elena said. “He presented a danger to the Gray Wolf line.”

“But…Hanalea never had any gifted descendants,” Raisa said. “Anyway, if Han came from a line of wizards, he wouldn’t have been living in Ragmarket.”

“His powers were suppressed,” Averill said.

“What do you mean, suppressed?” Raisa asked suspiciously.

“Those silver cuffs he wore. They kept his magic from manifesting. He didn’t even know he was gifted until a year ago.”

The story was disjointed and sketchy enough to be true. If it was a lie, they would have done a better job in the telling. But Raisa could see that they were measuring out their words—telling her only enough to serve their purposes, trying to avoid some dark and significant truth.

“But…why would the first Alister be gifted?” Raisa persisted. “The gifted trait isn’t compatible with the Gray Wolf magic, so it couldn’t have come from Hanalea, even though her father was a wizard. And Hanalea’s consort wasn’t a wizard—that wasn’t allowed after the Breaking.”

“Alister and Alyssa were fathered by Alger Waterlow,” Elena said finally, as if the words tasted bad.

After a long stunned silence, Raisa said, “That’s a lie.” She folded her arms across her chest like armor.

“It’s the truth,” Elena said. “Hunts Alone carries the blood of the Demon King.” She pronounced it like a curse. “It is apparently powerful enough to counter Gray Wolf magic.”

“You are saying that the jinxflinger living next door to Briar Rose is the get of the Demon King?” Nightwalker looked from Elena to Averill. They nodded. “How could you let this happen?” he demanded. “And why is he still alive?”

“If what you’re saying is true, then I’m his descendant also,” Raisa said.

“But you are not a jinxflinger, Briar Rose,” Nightwalker said, as if that made all the difference.

Raisa ground the heels of her hands against her temples, trying to release the tension. “Listen to me. He couldn’t be of the true line and be gifted. Gray Wolf magic is incompatible with high magic. So the Gray Wolf line passes through Alyssa, not Alister.”