Grayson's POV

The council meeting started at nine and was still going at four-fifteen.

This was not unusual. What was unusual was that I wasn't impatient.

I sat at the head of the table and listened to Marcus walk through the projected costs of the northern trade route expansion, and I thought about Baron eating breakfast this morning — the way he'd read the territory map I'd left on the table, not because I'd asked him to, just because it was there. He was nine years ...