"General speaks reason," the Emperor announced, his deep voice finalizing the verdict. He looked down at the Prime Minister with an expression of absolute, freezing disgust. "A military genius does not choose a heavily guarded trap to stage a rebellion."
The Prime Minister slumped onto his hands and knees, the polished jade floor suddenly feeling like a bed of icy spikes. His perfect hair was disheveled, his crimson robes tangled around him. He had lost. He had lost absolutely everything.
His elite spy network was dead. His assassination plot had been expertly reversed. And now, instead of standing over the ruined corpses of the Vanguard family, he was kneeling before the Emperor, publicly branded as an incompetent, paranoid, closeted deviant who wasted the court's time to cover up a messy midnight rendezvous.
