Three years ago, the containment team dispatched to Sector 9 had not failed. They had succeeded — partially. Lira had been found, subdued, and brought before a panel of three senior Council members for official elimination.
The elimination had not proceeded.
Not because of a failed method. Not because she’d escaped.
Because Kael had intervened.
He sat very still across from Orren and listened to this with his hands flat on the table and his expression giving nothing away, which was a significant achievement given that internally, something had gone very quiet in the specific way of a man standing at the edge of a drop he cannot see the bottom.
“You were there,” Orren said, with the tone of someone reporting facts to a superior he was no longer certain was safe to be honest with. “The
