“The seat remains empty until the heir claims it?” I ask.
“Or dies.”
I glance toward the unfinished painting. “They expected me to die?”
“No.” Valet’s eyes meet mine. “They expected me to find you and bring you home.”
A grandfather clock somewhere beyond the chamber strikes three. Everything tonight seems to move in threes. Three slow chimes. Three years. Three Phantoms. Three in the morning.
Valet rests one hand on the back of the wolf chair. “I’ve sat here for eighteen years.” He pauses. “Not because it belongs to me.” He looks at me. “Because I was waiting.”
The words hit harder than anything he’s said all evening. “I don’t know these people.”
“You don’t.”
“I don’t know this family.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t know you,” I point out.
Valet nods once. “I know, and you have every reason to doubt me.” He steps away from the chair. “No one will ask you to swear loyalty tonight, and no one will ask you to forgive me or to accept this name.”
He gestures toward the seat. “But before this night ends, I need you to understand one thing.”
My eyes remain on him.
“The Order spent years convincing you that you were nothing.” His gaze shifts toward the empty chair. “There is one thing they could never allow you to know.”
A long silence fills the chamber as I listen to the words from a man who helped create me.
“You were never nothing.”
The room feels impossibly still as it all sinks in. Valen knew. It is why he said the Order wasn’t aware that I had anything.
Valet takes one final step backward, and the distance between us grows, leaving only me and the empty chair.
I stare at the crest carved into its back, then at the wolves frozen in wood. For the first time in my life, I understand why men were willing to kill my mother.
She wasn’t protecting me from one man. She was protecting me from an empire.
“I need you to also understand one thing after today.”
“And what is that?” I ask.
“Don’t tell anyone your real name.”
“Why is that?”
“You’ll be the reason there’s a war.”
Which means it will involve everyone, including the men I call brothers.
Amy
Iwake before my alarm. For a moment, I don’t know why. I never wake up before it goes off, but then I remember. Saint walked me back to my dorm after the party. The way he’d looked at me before disappearing into the night.
I grab my phone from the nightstand, but my heart sinks.