Alexander sat at the head. Corvin on his right, hand t on a leather folder. Marus on his left, sses clean enough to make him look thoughtful instead of dangerous. Two handlers stood near the door, tablets ready, eyes down.


    A month ago I would have sat small. I would’ve counted light fixtures and told myself to be grateful I was allowed in the room at all.


    Maybe the twins were a bad influence on me.


    Alexander didn’t look at me first. He never did. He nced at Corvin, then at Marus, as if checking a mirror that would answer back.


    “We’re pausing all mergers,” Alexander said, like it was the weather. “Until the ord paperwork is formalized.”


    “The Adams spine isn’t something we can risk,” Corvin added. “We need the right man to stabilize it.”


    “The right man,” Marus repeated.


    I let them speak over me for another minute.


    “Excuse me,” I said, even. “Before we continue—I have a condition.”


    Corvin’s eyes lifted in a slow, practiced blink. Marus’s pen stilled. Alexander finally looked at me.


    “If you’re unwell we can—” Marus started.


    “Contractual,” I said. “Not medical.”


    The closest handler coughed into a sleeve. Alexander’s mouth ttened.


    “State it,” he said.


    “I want to raise my child,” I said.


    “The heir,” Corvin corrected, almost kindly.


    “My child,” I corrected back.


    A small shift went through the room, not loud enough to call a reaction.


    “You want to… raise them,” Marus said, as if I’d misused the verb.


    “I want full control over their life,” I said. “No dynasty advisor or handler can overrule me. I want it in writing. Irrevocable.”


    “To what point?” Alexander asked. “You can’t change a system, or a lineage.”


    “Maybe not,” I said. “Maybe if our mother had chosen you, Alexander, you’d be different. Maybe the whole dynasty would be different if someone chose the child before the bloodline.”


    All three men looked at me, as if I was too naive to understand what I was saying.


    Alexander’s jaw didn’t move. “Loving one child won’t change the bloodline.”


    “Maybe not. But maybe my child will choose their children. And maybe those children will choose theirs. Maybe in three generations there’s a better bnce between love and the ledger.”


    “You’ve read too many fairytales,” Alexander said. It wasn’t an insult. It was a diagnosis.


    “And why do you think I turned to them?” I asked, not raising my voice. “Is it so terrible I want it recorded that I’m the mother next to my child’s name—not only the dynasty’s crest?”


    “You’ll be recorded,” Corvin tapped his finger on the folder. “There are lines next to lines for lineage. This isn’t personal.”


    “That’s the problem,” I kept my voice calm, controlled. I would not let them put my request down to emotions.


    Marus rubbed his thumb against the edge of his pen. “Even if we indulged this—hypothetically—what are you asking for in practice?”


    “A use. I make decisions about the child’s education, medical care, travel, security. I can deny ess. I can refuse handlers. I can refuse the role of heir if the child isn’t well. And if I’m incapacitated, my choice of guardian stands. Dynasty approval is advisory only.”


    “That can’t be undone?” Alexander asked.


    “In writing,” I said. “With teeth.”


    Corvin opened his folder. It was for show—his eyes were on me, not the paper. “You’re asking us to weaken the spine.”


    “I’m asking you not to break a child on it.”


    Alexander’s silence stretched enough to be called a distance.


    “You’re not going to like my answer,” he said.


    “I rarely do,” I said.


    Corvin’s pen tapped once. “The question of who raises the heir is an internal family matter?—”


    “Then make it ours,”


    Marus took off his sses. He looked less dangerous with them on. “If you insist on a use, it will be ceremonial. A statement of maternal preference.”


    “I don’t want a preference,” I said. “I want authority.”


    Alexander leaned back. “Authority without ountability is a wish. You want to be a mother and not a piece of the machine. We don’t get to be both.”


    I could have let it go there. That was the old script—he gave the limits, I nodded, the meeting ended with other men’s names attached to my future. I thought about standing and leaving, quiet and careful, a good Adams daughter.


    Instead I looked at him. The kind of look that acknowledged the man and not just his chair.


    “There was a time you weren’t like this,” I said. “Maybe if our mother had protected you from the dynasty, you wouldn’t be so?—”


    “Capable?” Alexander cut in. “I took ownership of you. I kept our house respected. I didn’t get swallowed by cousins, uncles, rtives. That’s the job.”


    I shook my head. “I was going to say lonely.”


    Something changed around his eyes. A flicker, gone fast enough that if I told anyone they’d call it fiction.


    “Lonely keeps you alive,” he said.


    “Maybe. It also keeps you empty.”


    Marus cleared his throat. “We can table the poetry and return to terms.”


    “Terms,” I repeated. “Fine.”


    I slid a page across the ss. Not a legal draft. A list in my handwriting. It felt childish and braver than anything I’d done here.


    Corvin nced down. He read quickly.


    “Education: parent-directed, with external tutors chosen by the mother. Medical: primary consent vested in the mother. Security: veto power over assignments entering the household. Travel: mother determines international movements within legal parameters. Heir status: conditional on health as defined by the mother’s physician of record.” He paused. “Guardian: preselected by the mother.”


    “Add: no handlers in the home without my consent,” I said. “Add: no performance training before age seven. Add: no physical branding. Don’t look at me like that,” I added when Marus’s mouth moved. “We both know there’s a line item in the Codex that would make room for it.”


    “Removed,” Corvin said smoothly. “Several years ago.”


    “Then write it here,” I said. “In case someone forgetster.”


    Marus put his sses back on. “Even if we were inclined to humor this, there is a practical concern. The right man will want a say.”


    “And the wrong man will want the whole child,” I said. “If the ord is really about stability, you don’t need a man who can’t stand the word no.”


    Alexander watched me like he was trying to find the seam in what I was saying. “You think this makes you stronger.”


    “I think this makes the child safer,” I said. “And if the dynasty is as unkible as you say, it will survive a mother who loves her child more than the crest.”


    “Sentimentality is expensive,” he said. “We pay for it in blood.”


    Silence. The handlers pretended to read their screens.


    “You’re asking for a new precedent,” Corvin said. “Others will demand it.”


    “Then they’ll ask,” I said. “And if we’re lucky, in three generations more mothers will have their names next to their children’s.”


    Alexander’s mouth ttened again. “You learned to speak like this somewhere.”


    I didn’t answer.


    He looked at my list without picking it up.


    “The mergers pause until the ord is formalized,” he said atst, as if he hadn’t heard anything else. “We vet candidates. Slowly. Carefully. The spine holds.”


    “And my use?” I asked.


    He didn’t blink. “We’ll draft a statement of maternal prerogative.”


    “That can’t be undone,” I said.


    “It can be amended,” Marus said.


    “No,” I said.


    Corvin watched me. “You won’t get ‘no’ in this room. You’ll getnguage that looks like it. If you want more thannguage, you need leverage.”<fn977f> The rightful source is f?ndnovel</fn977f>


    “I know,” I said.


    “Do you?” Alexander asked.


    I thought about a set of dark hands dragging me out of a crushed car. I thought about another set of hands steadying me in a hospital chair, voice low in my ear telling me to breathe. Leverage had a dozen shapes. I wasn’t ready to put any of them on the table.


    Alexander tapped one finger once against the ss. “The right man,” he said again. “We’ll find him. We’re not risking the Adams spine on a romance.”


    “It isn’t a romance,” I said. “It’s a promise.”


    “To a child who doesn’t exist yet,” Marus said.


    “Exactly,” I said.


    They looked at me like I was dangerous because I was sincere.


    “Emilia,” Alexander said, softer than I expected. “You don’t want my job.”


    “I don’t want your job. I want to do mine.”


    “And what is that?” he asked, no sarcasm in it this time.


    “To protect what’s mine. Even if I have to write the protection myself.”


    We sat with that. The ss cooled under my hands. I could see my reflection looking back—still,posed, not the girl who used to make herself smaller when men raised their voices.


    Alexander exhaled. The sound was almost augh and wasn’t.


    “We’ll draft something,” he said. “It won’t be what you want. It will be more than we usually give.”


    “I’ll read it,” I said. “I’ll mark it.”


    “Of course you will,” Corvin murmured, and for the first time his voice sounded almost like approval.


    Marus slid a calendar across to Alexander. “Timelines,” he said. “If we’re pausing mergers?—”


    “We are,” Alexander said. “No new entanglements until the ord is inked. I don’t want another family using this moment to charge us interest.” He turned back to me. “You will show up. On time. In cream. Not ck.”


    I almost smiled. “It photographs as grief.”


    “It is grief,” he said dryly.


    “And yet you’d like me to smile,” I said.


    “That’s what we do. We carry and we smile.”


    “For the record,” I said, because I couldn’t help it, “you weren’t always like this. There was a time you walked me home from school and stopped to buy oranges because I said they smelled like summer.”


    He stared at me. “And?”


    “And you were kind. It didn’t make you weak.”


    “It made mete,” he said.


    “Is that what it is now?” I asked. “You’re alwayste to yourself.”


    He didn’t answer that. He looked at the list again, not picking it up, not pushing it back.


    “We’re done,” he said finally, formal again. “Corvin will coordinate the draft. Marus will review. We reconvene in a week.”


    I stood. My chair didn’t scrape. I pushed it in like a good student. I didn’t bow my head.


    At the door, he said my name.


    I turned.


    His face had gone smooth again. “Don’t confuse loving one child with saving the world. They’re not the same skill.”


    “I know. I want the first. You can keep the second.”


    Something like a smile ghosted across his mouth and died there. “You always were the easiest and the hardest problem.”


    “Maybe stop thinking of me as a problem,” I said. “Start thinking of me as a mother.”


    “That’s the same thing,” he said, and looked back at the papers.


    I should have cared that he dismissed me. I should have cared that I’d asked for something they would bend into a shape that served them first. That in a week we would sit at this table again and pretend we were in control of anything but the words.


    I didn’t.


    I thought of Vivienne’s, Charlotte’s mothers. Even my own. I thought of the eleven Emilia Adams that came before me. How circles don’t break unless you stop repeating it.


    I walked to the elevator. My phone buzzed once in my pocket and I ignored it, just to know I could. I breathed in and out and counted to five the way a voice had taught me. By four, my hands had stopped shaking. By five, I could feel the outline of a promise I’d said out loud in a room that hated hearing it.


    My child.


    I didn’t have one yet.


    But I had a use. And a list. And the quiet conviction that sometimes you start a war with a sentence, and sometimes you end one the same way.