Another brooding silence as they glowered at each other from the hard chairs to which their ambitions had swept them. Then, for once, Savine let her shoulders drop.

“You’re right,” she said, wincing as she tried to press at her aching belly through her corset. He was right, after all. “Maybe… I came to regret the things I had done, and so I hated to see you do the same. The truth is I played my part in it all. The lead role, even. I schemed and lied and betrayed. And you are the one who has paid the price. You, and Orso, and all those I ground to dust in my mills, and turned to meat on my battlefields, and let rot in my slums. I am sorry for that. Sorry for Orso and sorry for you. Sorry for all of it… but… thinking now, if I had the same choices to make… I cannot say I would not do it all again.” She met his eyes, and gave a little shrug. “Maybe, after all… I’m the villain.”

Leo glared at her from the other end of the table. “So. You’ll back down about Sipani?”

“Oh, no. I won’t back down about anything.”

He stared a moment longer, mouth slightly open. Then he sagged in his chair. “Is this how it always is? You get what you wanted, but somehow it’s not what you wanted at all? Every victory turns out to be just another kind of defeat?”

He looked so withered, so ruined, she was caught between disgust and pity. She could not forgive him, but she knew she had helped make him what he was. For better or worse, they were shackled together. She put aside her anger and gave a weary sigh.

“This is not a victory or a defeat, Leo, it is a marriage.” Now she slipped the box from her sleeve and took a pinch up one nostril. “I suggested to

you, before our wedding, that you should look on it as a business relationship.” She smothered a sneeze. “I suggest you continue to do so. Partners need not see eye to eye on every point. They can even, frankly, detest

each other on a personal level.” She took a pinch up the other nostril. “But sensible ones collaborate, for the good of the business. I suggest we collaborate, for the good of our children. They need their father. For the good of the Union. It needs its champion.” She dabbed her nose clean. “We have the chance to do so much good together. It would be a crime to throw it away simply because we cannot agree.” And she closed the

box with a snap.

“I’ll fight you, if I must.” Leo shifted his useless left arm in his jacket. “I’ve never backed down from a fight.”

“Please.” Savine suppressed a wince at another twinge in her belly. “This is no storybook. You might not be the villain but you’re for damn sure not the hero.” She forced her shoulders back, and her smile back on. “Selest!”