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The communication crystal sat on Aria's desk like a loaded gun.
It was a delicate thing—hand-blown quartz the color of winter fog, etched with the royal seal of the Imperial Crown and wrapped in filigree silver that had probably cost more than most families earned in a decade. A direct line to the Queen's private chambers. A gift from Aria's godmother on her sixteenth birthday, back when the old Aria had wept with joy at the privilege of being connected to royalty.
Aria looked at it the way she might look at a piece of evidence in an interrogation room. Useful. Dangerous. Requiring careful handling.
She had composed the message seventeen times in her head before committing a single word to the crystal's memory matrix. Seventeen iterations, each one stripped of emotion, stripped
