POV: Jake

“Stories spread faster than armies.”

“They’re saying the storm bowed.”

I did not lift my head at first. I kept my hands flat against the table, palms pressing into old parchment that smelled of dust, ink, and decisions that no longer felt permanent.

The map beneath my fingers had been redrawn so many times that the original borders were ghosts, barely visible beneath newer lines of control and treaty. I could feel the tremor in the messenger’s voice without looking at ...