Maren's formal resignation from the Ironpeak council was not dramatic.
She had prepared a written statement, precise and honest, without sentimentality and without the performance of sentiment that sometimes accompanied formal occasions, and she read it aloud to the assembled council with the same composure she had brought to every session she had attended in this room over twelve years. The council, to their credit, listened without interrupting.
Then she set the written statement down and spoke.
She told them who she was.
The full truth, on the formal record, for the first time in twelve years of sitting in this room. Her real name, the one she had put aside forty years ago and carried in the private part of herself ever since. Her connection to the Vayne bloodline, the specific thre
