THE BREAKING POINT
It happened in the archive room.
We had been working late, three days after the confrontation, deep into the council case, pulling the last of the documentation together with the careful precision of people building something that had to be unassailable. The house was quiet around us. Everyone else had gone to bed.
It was close to midnight when I found the final piece.
A secondary lineage record, tucked into the back of a folder I had nearly set aside. It cross-referenced my mother's family with the original border treaty in language so direct that even a hostile council member would have difficulty arguing around it. I read it twice to be sure.
"Roger," I said.
He came to stand beside me at the archive shelf, close because the shelf was narrow and the light was lo
