"Believe me," she said softly, "I understand that."

The Empire and the Red Dragon weren't all that different. She supposed it was mostly a matter of scale. The Emperor conquered whole plants. The Red Dragon savaged kingdoms. She was sure he'd try to take on a planet, if he could.

Fortunately, he couldn't.

"I wish I had a cool," she was pleased with her use of the word 'cool,' "code name, like that. I just had to pretend to be courtiers a lot." Which was only fun half of the time. "I would have loved a title. Maybe...Valeria's Hand? That would sound cool, right?"