The decoded words lay on the desk, a litany of doom stark and brutal in the flickering candlelight.
Arin's mind, usually a sharp, quick thing, felt slow, bogged down in the sheer weight of it all. Therain. Roen. Vaeren. The dying King. A trifecta of catastrophes, a storm gathering on the horizon, and she was trapped in a seaside house with a poet prince who was trying to wish it all away.
She held the thin parchment in her hand, the secret fears of a princess she barely knew, and it felt heavier than a block of stone. This letter changed everything. Her own survival was no longer a solitary game of cat and mouse. It was now a tiny, insignificant piece of a much larger, bloodier board.
