Iris Monroe answered without hesitation, the kind of clean, unhesitating answer that came from a story she had clearly told herself a hundred times. "He said he went off to serve. Military. Some classified posting, the dangerous kind. So I didn't push him on it. A mother learns when to stop asking. But I'll say this much. The man who walked back through that door is a very different man from the boy who left."
Yvonne Reed and George Lane exchanged a long, careful look over the rim of their teacups.
The military. Right. Whatever sort of soldiering it was that left Combat Elites trembling on their feet and got a Davis Family patriarch bowing like a footman, it was not the kind of military deployment that came with a pension and a parade. Were they sending him into the heavens? Was he off f
