So she stood in the pale suit she had chosen to be seen in, under the eyes of the board her father had spent years poisoning against her, and she did the thing she had been imprisoned for a decade for refusing to stop doing.

She spoke clearly, as a sane woman, and dared them to hear her.

The board, who had come expecting to rubber-stamp the quiet removal of a sick woman, went still.

“If I am unstable, Father,” Cosima said, and her voice carried the length of the mahogany table without her raising it, “then perhaps you can explain to this board why the key I retrieved on my wedding night — the key you sent your men to take back before midnight — unlocks this.”

She nodded once.

Caspian set the steel box on the conference table in front of the assembled directors, and fitted the old brass key into its lock, and turned it.