As they made their way toward the main auditorium for the meeting with the Five Popes, Ryn's thoughts refused to slow.
Habit took over. He slipped into analysis automatically: pros, cons, leverages, and consequences…trying to impose structure on something that clearly had none.
Start with the cons.
The most obvious one was exposure.
The version of him that people had dismissed, the "mediocre" persona, was now harder to maintain now that he was in the limelight.
That anonymity had been useful.
But—
It wasn't gone.
Not entirely.
If anything, it had merely shifted.
Ryn exhaled quietly.
People wouldn't assume sudden competence. They would assume something had happened under the table.
And strangely enough, that worked in his favor.
Although… it would taint the Princess's image just as much.
Which brought the question crashing back.
Why did she go through with it?
Someone like her would have known exactly how this would look.
