Let's look at them properly.
''Kieran's mother'' was at the far end, and God, this woman. Even Heena — who did not impress easily, who had met heads of state and generals and people who moved empires — found herself genuinely interested every time she studied this woman's file.
She'd been a princess. Small kingdom, yes, but the real thing. She had been part of a political arrangement — her kingdom needed protection, Duke Valen's house needed the alliance — and she had crossed a border with her staff and her composure and whatever she'd had the sense to bring, and she had arrived in a house that did not deserve her and had proceeded to become the most immovable thing in it.
Sophisticated was the polite word. 'Formidable' was the accurate one. The kind of woman who didn't raise her voice because she didn't need to, who had outlasted thirty years of her husband's various disasters by being simply, structurally 'better' than all of them.
