Rosalind requested a private conversation with Bri and myself the following evening, an unusual formality from a woman who typically simply appeared in the training yard whenever she judged the moment right rather than arranging anything through formal channels, and I understood, the moment we sat down together in my study, that whatever she had come to say carried real weight behind it, enough weight that she had chosen to break from her usual habits entirely.
Your power is growing faster than even I expected, she said to Bri without preamble, settling into the chair across from us with none of her usual patient ease. Faster than your mother's ever did, faster, I suspect, than Renata herself anticipated when she built her entire strategy around the assumption that suppression alone would
