Kaelen's POV
I was still holding the letter when Marcus came in.
His face told me everything before he opened his mouth. The particular stillness of a man who has brought bad news and is deciding how to deliver it. I set the letter down on the table and waited. The paper was still warm from being pressed against my chest. I could still feel the weight of her words in my hands.
"The intelligence is brief," Marcus said. "And clean. And bad."
"How bad?"
"Someone is asking questions about the Voice. Not from inside Dravara's court. From outside it."
I sat back. "Outside how?"
"The methodology is wrong for a domestic investigation. Too resourced. Too patient. The kind of careful, lateral information gathering that belongs to a foreign operation." He paused. "It's been running for months. Now it's accelerating."
