Mornings in the palace had a way of pretending nothing had happened.
The stone was the same. The corridors were the same. The staff moved with that efficient glide that said crisis was a background program, not a foreground one.
Inside our suite, the illusion didn’t hold.
My son lay on his stomach on the rug, drawing. Wolfie sat upright beside him, apparently supervising. The picture was a mess of blue and green swirls with a big yellow blob in the middle.
“What’s that?” I asked, sinking down cross‑legged beside him.
“The weather,” he said, as if it were obvious. “Here.”
He tapped the yellow. “Us.”
“What’s the blue?” I asked.
“Bad wolves,” he said.
“And the green?”
He wrinkled his nose. “The king. He’s loud.”
I bit back a smile. “Accurate.”
Mara sat at the table with a stack of
