"You demand our absolute surrender under threat of extermination. You strip the Council of its founding authority and place an outsider's boot upon our necks. And who is this 'true heir' you expect us to bow to? Morvana's daughters hold the legal succession!"
"The princesses hold nothing," Jack's voice cut through the air, low and razor-sharp.
The young, arrogant Jack stepped forward, looking directly into Selene Alyon's weeping eyes, then sweeping his heterochromic gaze across Elowen, Calix, and Sable.
"Before Queen Morvana was placed in abyssal chains, she gave a full, uncoerced confession before her King," Jack said, every syllable calculated to dismantle the last shred of their aristocratic illusions.
"Miravelle, Elysanthe, and Rosethiel are not of royal blood. Not a single one of them carries Maelor's lineage. Caspian Alyon fathered them while the King was deployed to the frontiers. They are the illegitimate spawn of a traitorous clerk."
