But I had spent nine years in rooms with men far more dangerous than my brother, men who had done far worse than he had, and I had learned that the thing that protects you in those rooms is not being the strongest person present.

It is being the most certain.

Julian ran on the fear of others; take away their fear and there was nothing underneath, no real force, just a frightened greedy man who had never once been told no by someone who meant it.

So I told him no.

I stood in his hallway with the state coming through his door and I told him, in the quietest voice I own, exactly what he was, and I watched the whole architecture of his authority come down, and I was not afraid, and my not being afraid was, I think, the thing he found most impossible to bear.

Chapter 12 — Under His Coat