"Your Majesty," Cresty said, to Seravine, with the specific tone of someone who has decided that the professional response to the current situation is to perform professionalism very hard and hope it helps. "My apologies for—" she gestured at the general concept of the party, "—all of this."
Seravine looked at them. At the party that had arrived in her throne room — the guild operative performing professionalism, the blacksmith rubbing her face, the thief with the pleasant expression, and the man sitting in her throne with his legs crossed and his knuckle under his chin looking at her with the easy attention of someone who had been waiting for this conversation to start and was ready to have it.
She looked at all of it.
She sighed.
Every rumor she managed. Every piece of information she controlled. Every political narrative she shaped through the private channels and the careful timing and the decades of expertise in making things go the direction she intended them to go.
