“I was there,” Rao pressed on, voice as low as he could make it, “when Malini wrote him letter after letter, convincing him to take up his birthright again. I was there when she convinced lord after lord, warrior and prince and king, to join her brother’s cause. I was there when… when she stood before the court and called Chandra a false emperor on a stolen throne and proclaimed that she spoke for the mothers of flame. When she promised he would fall.”
