The words landed on Agnes's chest and stayed there, each one heavier than the last, the sentence constructing itself in her mind with the slow, deliberate precision of a building being erected on a foundation she hadn't known existed.
Her jaw dropped.
"You cannot be serious."
"Oh, I am very serious." Reginald's hands were still folded. His voice was still level. The calm of a man who had spent months engineering this outcome and was delivering the final result with the composure of a diplomat presenting terms. "The Emperor is married. His wife holds the formal title. But the Fae monarchy has a long tradition of consorts, and the consort title carries political weight that rivals the queen's in practice if the consort is strategic enough to leverage it."
He paused. Let the architecture settle.
