KIRA

The Border House sat at the edge of both territories like a comma between two sentences, not fully belonging to either, neutral by design and long tradition. Stone walls, low ceilings, fires in every room because the mountain cold didn't care about diplomacy. It had hosted seventeen territorial summits in the last century according to the plaque beside the entrance, which someone had polished recently in anticipation of an eighteenth.

We arrived the evening before. Caius's delegation was ...