He had ceased to be powerful the moment the deed came out of Arthur’s portfolio, and he was only now beginning to feel it.

I felt something clarify in me, watching Julian shrink there in the doorway, and it was not the triumph I had expected to feel.

For six hours I had imagined this moment, the moment he understood, and I had assumed it would taste like victory.

It did not.

What I felt instead was a kind of cold sadness at how ordinary his power had turned out to be, how thin, how entirely dependent on no one ever checking.

This man had ruled my mother’s life for two years.