The garden smelled of late-blooming jasmine and politics.
Elena walked through it the way she walked through everything now — unhurried, the specific, settled pace of a woman who has stopped performing and started simply 'being,' the cold ease of someone who has finished the anxious portion of their ambition and arrived somewhere quieter and more dangerous.
Her two sidekicks flanked her at the correct distance.
Not too close — they'd learned that. Not too far — they'd learned that too. The precise, calibrated orbit of two women who understood their function and had made their peace with it.
"Did you see her at the morning session?" Petra, the one on her left, picking up a conversational thread she'd been working on for the last three minutes. "That new girl. The way she looked at you when Master Aldren announced the ranking."
Elena said nothing.
Kept walking.
