The summons arrived just after dawn, delivered by a steward so pale and stiff with officious importance that he looked like a man walking to his own execution. It was an engraved invitation, not a request, but demanding my presence at an emergency meeting of the estate's senior council in the west wing's formal chamber. The seal on the wax was not the Duke's raven, but the Dowager Duchess Gwen's gilded rose, and it was a public declaration of war.
I knew what this was. It was the kangaroo court Seraphina had warned me about, the stage upon which my public execution was to be performed. Duchess Gwen was moving with the speed and precision of a master tactician, using the outrage over Evelyne's confinement to rally her forces. She wasn't just trying to poison the well; she was trying to dam the river and starve me out entirely.
