"Opalyn," he says, pronouncing it exactly correctly on the first try. "You evacuated that platform with everyone else when the first instability occurred. I'll figure out how to make the rest of it look like an accident, or maybe like the Dread Emperor intervened. You are a perfectly normal mid-high Duchess or at least not any stranger than they already know."
"In reality, you're at the level that would exist between Prince and Dread Emperor, if the Dread Emperor suffered people to live who could maybe kill him and take over Eldrida if thirty of them were ever to combine forces."
"Give no sign of this, ever."