Bartholomew pushed open the gilded doors, and I stepped into a room that smelled of old paper and beeswax. A long table stretched beneath a painted ceiling, and seated around it were seven strangers in formal suits, each with a folder in front of them. At the head of the table sat an elderly woman I had never met, though something in her sharp gray eyes reminded me painfully of Grandma. She rose when she saw me. “You must be Elara,” she said. “Cordelia spoke of you often. She said you were the only one who ever asked the right questions.”

I did not understand. I was a compliance analyst from Cincinnati with four hundred dollars to my name, standing in a castle while people in tailored suits watched me like I mattered. Bartholomew guided me to an empty chair. The elderly woman slid a thick leather folder across the polished wood until it stopped in front of me. “Your grandmother did not leave you a plane ticket,” she said quietly. “She left you everything that actually mattered. The villas and the cash were the decoys. Open it.”