For a moment Thessian simply looked at her—not with pity, not with softness, but not with indifference either. His gaze measured her the way he measured everything, assessing condition and threat and utility with the same cold calculus he applied to military situations. But beneath that assessment, something else flickered briefly before being suppressed. She was evidence, yes. Victim, certainly. Survivor, undeniably. And perhaps, more than any of those things, she was one of the few living people who truly understood what had been operating beneath the kingdoms for decades, what engine of replication and replacement had been running in darkness while the surface world concerned itself with taxes and treaties and the ordinary business of power.
"Move her upstairs," Thessian said finally.
