Chapter 248 - -248
Stood — slowly, managing the ache with the same patient dignity he’d been managing it with all day — and crossed toward the door. Stopped when he reached it.
"The working list," he said. "Item three — the collar review. You wrote it in before item seven, which was the secretary surveillance."
"Yes," she said.
"You prioritized it over active intelligence gathering," he said.
"Yes," she said again.
He looked at the door.
"Thank you," he said.
Not the formal kind. Not palace language. Just — the other kind.
He left.
The door closed with its usual soft click.
Elara sat in the quiet for a moment, in the lamplight, with the working list and the seventeen items and the growing case and the empire sleeping around her.
Then she picked up the pen.