Her voice is a whipcrack, the usual warmth and gentleness all but gone beneath the cutting edge of her disappointment. "That is not your decision. Not if there were any other way to handle the situation."

Her hands aren't clean of blood. She's killed, when she's been forced to kill, but never like this. Never simply because the thought of a little control, a little restraint, was an irritation instead of a leash. "You know nothing of that man. His life. His desires. What his loss might mean to someone else."