She looked well.
That was the thing Victoria kept coming back to in the photographs and it was worse in person. She looked genuinely well. Not performing wellness, not the careful presentation of a woman who was managing....actually well. The colour in her face. The ease of how she stood. The laugh that had come out of her a minute ago with no effort at all.
She'd been poisoned six weeks ago.
Victoria thought about that.
She thought about the hospital reports she'd found through channels she wasn't going to examine too closely. Critical condition. Organ stress. A woman who had apparently identified the compound that was killing her from memory while she was barely conscious and had talked the medical team through the treatment.
Of course she had.
Victoria picked up her coffee.
She looked at Aria's left hand.
