The butler stood in the hallway. Stanley. Old. Gray-haired. The man who had served the family for fifteen years. The man who had poured Johana's tea and tucked her into bed and told her stories when her mother was away.
His face, in the candlelight, was wrong. The usual warmth was gone. The smile, the grandfatherly smile that had always been there, was absent. His eyes, hard and flat, looked at Mireille the way a butcher looked at livestock.
"You are wounded, my lady," he said. His voice was flat. The warmth, the servility, the deference. All gone. Replaced by something cold. Final.
"Stanley." Mireille's voice was tight. The healing potion had closed the wound, but the poison's effects lingered. Her hand, still at her side, trembled. "The mission. The information I collected. The Latvia files. They were..."
"Compromised," Stanley said. "I know. I told them."
The word. 'Them.' The word that changed everything. The word that transformed the butler from servant to traitor.
