Lenora's POV
When Bramwell told me about Renatta, I went for a walk.
This was my version of what he did with the dagger — a physical displacement of something that needed to be moved through the body before it could be processed in the mind.
I walked the river path for an hour. The spring was full now, the water high and fast, the banks green with new growth. I stopped at the low-arched bridge and stood on it and looked downstream.
Fifteen years.
Marcelline had been running people for fifteen years. Possibly longer. The inquiry had found the architecture of the last five years in detail. But the thing about institutional power is that it begins before you can see it — the roots precede the tree, and the tree precedes the shadow, and most people only notice the shadow.
Renatta was six
