ARIA
They arrested Elder Thomas six hours after the Council session ended and I watched from Kael's quarters as palace guards escorted him through the courtyard in restraints that looked almost respectful given what he'd done.
He looked up at our window before they put him in the transport and I saw in his face not defeat but certainty, the particular expression of someone who believed time would prove him right even if the present had proven him wrong.
"He thinks I'm going to kill someone," I said. "The way my mother did. He thinks it's inevitable."
Kael's arms came around me from behind and I leaned back against him and tried to reconcile the fact that we'd won with the knowledge that Thomas's warnings weren't entirely unfounded, that my mother had killed three Council members trying to protect me when I was an infant and stress had overwhelmed her control exactly the way Thomas feared would happen to me eventually.
