Danika pressed a hand to her chest, tears rising.

“Sir, it was a terrible misunderstanding.”

Misunderstanding. It was the second time that night someone had reached for a word designed to shrink the thing they’d done into something accidental and small.

First there had been scene, and now misunderstanding — the vocabulary of people who have been caught and want to relocate the fault from their character to some vague clerical fog.

But nothing had been misunderstood.

Danika had understood perfectly.