The message arrived without ceremony.
This was notable because everything at the Shadow Court arrived with some degree of ceremony not performed ceremony, not the ornamental kind, but the structural kind; the kind embedded in how information moved through an institution that had been managing information for generations.
Couriers announced themselves.
Documents came sealed. Communications passed through Caer's careful processing before reaching Kael's desk.
This message arrived directly.
She was in the strategy room with Kael and Caer when it happened — three days after the dinner, two days after the seating arrangement work, which had taken most of an afternoon and had been, as predicted, the most productive she'd felt since arriving at the Shadow Court and also the most carefully m
