She sat back.
"Let me be very clear," she said. "I can kill them. All five of them. I have cause, I have evidence, and I have the authority. The only question was whether doing so was worth the political disruption." A beat. "The calculus has changed."
The word 'kill' in her mouth was not dramatic. It wasn't a threat delivered for effect.
It was simply a fact, stated with the same tone one might use to discuss weather.
That, somehow, made it worse.
All four of them sat very still.
Then — and this was why she'd noted him from the beginning — Duke Valen spoke.
Kieran's father. Military background, iron-straight posture, the face of a man who had survived forty years of court politics by being the person in the room who asked the question everyone else was avoiding.
"Your Majesty," he said, "what do you want?"
Heena looked at him.
