"She was partially awakened then," Vael said carefully. "Now she's depleted. The situations are...."
"The situations are incomparable," Malachai said, and there it was....the thing beneath the composure, the controlled rage pressing against the surface like heat through glass, "because in one of them we didn't know what we were dealing with. We sent a blade against something that required a different instrument entirely."
He moved to the window again. The city. The dark. The order that only existed if you didn't look too closely.
"She's in a bed bleeding," he said, "and she is still more dangerous than she appears. She always has been. That's the problem." He turned his profile to the glass. "Her father was like that. Azrael could walk into a room half-dead and still be the most politically dangerous person in it. You'd think you had him cornered and then discover he'd been maneuvering you into a position you didn't notice until it was too late."
