Vespera regarded him through the projection. The silence between them carried more than two decades of marriage, five children, a guild built from nothing, and the slow, steady erosion of everything that had once held those things together.
"Because I felt like it," she said.
Magnus's jaw locked.
"You felt like it."
"Yes."
"Our daughter is operating as a strange something above that bastard's head on a live broadcast. The secret you said would be kept is hanging by a thread, and your explanation is that you felt like it. Did it not occur to you," Magnus demanded, and the control in his voice was a physical thing now, a cage built syllable by syllable, "to ask my opinion before making this decision?"
"No."
"No," Magnus repeated.
"I already know your opinion."
