"So spiteful," he observed without emotion. The depth of her feeling on such topics, which to him seemed utterly mundane, never ceased to amaze. Had she really been harboring this resentment towards her sister for years and only just now decided to find a way to act on it? Amazing. When he'd married her, he wouldn't have thought her capable of maintaining anything for that long, even if it was a relatively petty grudge.

Tiberius briefly turned his attention to his desk and reshuffled a few papers he had laid out. "It seems unnecessarily complicated," he said passively. "A lot of magic involved in disguise and deception — all of which might lead, for all we know, to another pair of twin girls," he added with an unamused glance at Antigone. "It also seems quite likely that it would be uncovered at some point before the scheme was finished, and we'd have to tidy things up in such a way that didn't reveal our involvement — which you may have no qualms about," he noted, "but would certainly prove a colossal wasted effort for us."

He realized after he stopped that his language had shifted — we and us — when he had never intended to include Antigone in any part of this process, except to fake a pregnancy when the time came.