"We were chosen and trained and bound to the clan Raikarndel through her wisdom and her power, given purpose and direction and the sacred duty of protecting the true heir when the time came for that heir to be found and brought home to claim what was rightfully theirs."
She leaned forward slightly, her intensity growing with each word, her conviction burning through the careful neutrality she had been maintaining.
"We believe you are that heir," she said.
"Not because of prophecy or tradition or the politics of succession, but because we have seen what you are, witnessed the strength of your awakening, watched you fight with power that combines both your father's techniques and your mother's bloodline in ways that none of the others have demonstrated, and we know with certainty that carries more weight than any formal declaration that you are the only one who carries the true blood of both parents in equal measure."
