The drawing room was crowded with the ghosts of Ashlyn's ambition.
"How could this be?" Ashlyn murmured to herself. Her voice was a ragged whisper, bouncing off the silent walls.
She gripped the back of a velvet chair, her fingernails digging into the fabric.
"Derek has always been useless," she hissed, trying to force the world to fit her narrative. "Everyone knows it. The whole capital knows it. He was the skiver. The drunkard. The man who spent his days sleeping and his nights in the arms of a western witch."
She shook her head violently, her hair coming loose from its pins. She couldn't reconcile the image of the lazy brother-in-law she despised with the commanding warlord who had just walked out of the room with the King's scroll.
"He was cheating," she decided, her eyes narrowing. "Drinking, pretending to be someone with knowledge about the army just to impress people. It was all a show."
She started pacing, her footsteps heavy and angry.
