Diana sat down.
Aurelius cleared his throat, his amber eyes moving across the faces at the table with the ease of someone who had run a thousand meetings and found the ceremony of them useful.
"Well," he said, "since we are all here, we were just about to begin. The question of approach." He leaned back in his chair, the molten veins in the wall behind him pulsing slow and steady. "Let's be direct about it. We are not going to the Valdris Expanse to negotiate with Kruel. We are going to stop him. Permanently. So the question is how."
Diana smiled.
It was a small smile and it didn't reach her eyes and it was the kind of smile that sat on a face when the face had been waiting for permission to say something for a long time.
"I was hoping you'd say that," she said. Then she looked at the door. "Shade...Mask"
Nothing happened for a half second.
Then Shade materialized.
