Beatrice POV
Rebels can be isolated, discredited, absorbed.
Witnesses persist.
Witnesses don't argue about what should happen.
They talk about what is happening.
And that is far more corrosive.
Aurora understood that instinctively.
That was why her restraint frightened people, it refused to tell them how to feel about it.
Catherine, on the other hand, told them exactly how to feel.
Relieved.
Safe.
Managed.
And now she was building an archive of every mind that twitched when that relief grew tight.
I exhaled slowly.
Safety had been the bargain offered to me.
Visibility, in exchange for silence.
Remain reasonable. Remain consultative. Remain inside the lines.
And Aurora would bear the weight of anything I did that stepped outside them.
That was the clause.
I'd seen it flicker through the system when my status changed nested deep, phrased delicately, deniably.
If Beatrice speaks publicly, authority is implicated.
Aurora's authority.
A leash disguised as protection.
