Lenora's POV
Bramwell found me outside when they brought Aldric out.
The guard captain walked between Daren's men with the posture of someone who has put down a very heavy thing and is still deciding how to be without it. His face, when he passed me, was hollowed with the particular exhaustion of someone who has been living on the wrong side of fear for too long.
Bramwell came to stand beside me.
"She has a daughter," I said.
"Yes."
"Marcelline took a guard captain's daughter as leverage for six years."
"Yes." His voice was very controlled.
I thought about the ledger. The forty-seven families. The fifteen years of Elder Renatta. Brant Kellor's sister. Aldric's daughter. The number of ordinary people whose lives had been bent into shapes that served her, each one a thread in the fab
