Chapter 17: Cersei's Confidence

The summons came at the wrong hour.

Not wrong in the sense of inconvenient — wrong in the sense of deliberate, the way a question asked too casually is always the question the asker has been composing for days. The other ladies had been dismissed after the evening meal, released to their embroidery and their gossip with the quiet efficiency of a woman who had learned to clear a room without appearing to want it cleared. Elspeth had nearly made it to the door when Lady Meredith's voice found her — not her name, just a look, the specific directional quality of a gaze that meant: *not you*.

She waited.