“I see,” the Queen said yet again.

“In time of war, such a suggestion often has merit,” she continued after a brief pause, her eyes deadly as her sentence reminded him of another meeting in this same office four years before. “Yet in this instance, I think it may be… premature.” High Ridge’s eyes widened, and the merest hint of a smile touched her lips. “While I am, of course, deeply gratified by your willingness to reach out to your political opponents in what you’ve so correctly described as a moment of crisis, I feel that it would be most unfair to burden you with possible partisan disputes within your Cabinet at a moment when you must be free to concentrate on critical decisions. In addition, it would be unjust to create a situation in which you did not feel completely free to continue to make those decisions for which you, as Prime Minister, must bear ultimate responsibility.”

He stared at her, unable to believe what she’d just said. The Constitution required him to inform her and obtain her formal consent to any proposal to form a new government, but no monarch in the entire history of the Star Kingdom had ever refused that consent once it was sought. It was unheard of—preposterous! But as he gazed into Elizabeth Winton’s unflinching, flint-hard eyes, he knew it was happening anyway.

She gazed back at him, her face carved from mahogany steel, and he recognized her refusal to countersign his bid for political survival. There would be no “coalition government,” no inclusion of the Centrists and Crown Loyalists to broaden his basis of support… or share in the guilt by association if additional reports of disaster rolled in. Nor would she even permit him to extend in her name the invitation William Alexander would almost certainly have refused, thus giving High Ridge at least the threadbare cover of being able to accuse the Centrists of refusing to support the Crown at this moment of need.

She had limited him to just two options: to continue without the cover of a joint government with the Opposition, or to resign. And if he resigned, it would be no more and no less than a formal admission of full responsibility on his part.

The moment stretched out between them, shivering with unspoken tension, and he hovered on the brink of threatening to resign if she did not endorse a coalition. But that was what she wanted. That was precisely the politically suicidal misstep into which she strove to drive him, and he felt a flowering of indignant outrage that the Crown should resort to such blatant political maneuvering at such a moment.

“Were there any further measures you wish to propose or discuss?” she asked into the ringing silence, and he recognized the question’s message. Whatever he might propose, whatever he might recommend, she would saddle him unmistakably, personally, and permanently with responsibility for it.

“No, Your Majesty,” he heard himself say. “Not at this time.”