(Elizabeth Aurelius POV)
I had wanted him to lie.
I was honest enough to admit that to myself standing by the fire, and not honest enough to admit it to anyone else. For perhaps three seconds, while the old man waited and the whole chamber waited with him, I had wanted Alash to give them the careful sentence. I had read the treaty three times and carried my father's seal for nine days, and I had wanted, very badly, for one person in that row to say the thing that would let me open the box.
He hadn't. He had said no, and then he had said exactly why, and every word of it had been true. I had been in that house. I knew how close the carts had come.
I had chosen Petra because she argued with me. It had not occurred to me until this morning that I might need to make that choice again, in other rooms, with people I hadn't chosen at all.
"Your Highness." The man in grey had recovered. "We have three options."
"Tell me."
