By the time Natalie turned eighteen, the entire House of Alamina had lost what little collective dignity it normally pretended to possess.
This was, in Rafael's opinion, not Natalie's fault.
It was the fault of the law.
More specifically, it was the fault of Damian.
Years ago, with the cool efficiency of a man who enjoyed rearranging old systems until half the nobility developed chest pain, Damian had lowered the legal age of adulthood from twenty-one to eighteen. Officially, it had been framed as modernization. Practicality. A recognition that young nobles were already being educated, displayed, negotiated over, and quietly used in political life long before the law admitted it. Unofficially, it had been Damian looking at an entire aristocratic structure built on hypocrisy and deciding to make it answer for itself.
The reform had not gone quite as far as the old houses feared.
