On the ground, my right hand lay open against the cold stone. And slowly, so slowly that no one noticed, my thumb moved across the face of my mother's signet ring. The heavy gold band with the Valente crest. The ring I had never taken off, not even when I was pretending to be no one. Not even when I was letting a man from a dying rust-belt crew call himself my husband and run my territory into the ground.
I had already decided.
The verdict was sealed.
Luna just didn't know it yet.
None of them did.
Just as Luna's laughter reached its peak, a sound cut through the courtyard. Engines. Not one. Many. The low, controlled growl of heavy vehicles moving in formation, the kind of sound that doesn't belong outside a school.
A line of black armored sedans swept up to the academy gates and stopped in precise sequence, one after another, like a funeral procession that had arrived early.
Doors opened in unison.