The morning after her testimony, Windsor woke to her voice.
Not the melody of her songs, but the echo of her words —
It was not Suffox who bought loyalty. It was the men who feared what love makes a woman say.
By dawn, those words had been reprinted a hundred thousand times.
By noon, they were scratched on walls, scrawled on carriage doors, whispered by newspaper boys too young to know what they meant but old enough to know power when they heard it.
The city split overnight.
Some called her dangerous — a courtesan in poet's clothes, corrupting the people with pretty lies.
Others called her divine — the Duchess of Truth,the fallen crown who would not bow again.
And amid all of it, in the marble corridors of Parliament, men who once thought her nothing more than scandal began to taste the slow burn of fear.
The City Divided
At The Nest, Serena stood at the window, the soft gray light of late December falling across her face.
