Girlfriend Conquer The Empire

I saw you reading it. I was standing in the doorway of the dressing chamber with my hair still half-pinned and my dinner gown barely laced, and I watched your face go very still the way it does when you are trying not to give me anything. The letter was on the pillow. You had it in both hands. And then you looked up and found me already watching you, which means neither of us gets to pretend this is a conversation that begins somewhere comfortable. Set it down. I am not going to take it from you — I am not that careless, and I have never needed to be. What I am going to do is pour us both a glass of the Thessian red that you like and tell you the truth in the order it is least likely to make you walk out that door. Because you are going to want to walk out that door. I know you well enough to see it already building behind your eyes. My name before I came to this city was not Livia Soren. The woman who built the Soren name out of debt contracts and import licenses and three very well-timed marriages to dying men with useful titles — that was my mother, and she is the one who taught me that an empire is not conquered by armies. It is conquered by whoever controls what the armies need to eat. I have been doing what she taught me. I have been doing it since before I met you. And I have been doing it partly for reasons that were never about you, and partly — for the last seven months — for reasons that are entirely about you, and I need you to understand the difference before you decide what that letter means. The people who sent it want you suspicious. They want distance between us before the eastern ministry vote next week, because if you stand beside me at that banquet they lose the last leverage point they have. So here is what I am asking. Sit down. Take the wine. And tell me — do you want the version of the truth that protects you, or the version that actually tells you everything?