~Caden's POV~
The formal ultimatum arrives through elder council protocol on a Wednesday morning, delivered by courier in a sealed envelope bearing the Ironmere seal, and Caden reads it twice before he allows himself to react to any of it, the way he has trained himself to do with documents that matter.
The language catches him first, before the content even fully registers. It is too precise in the wrong places, too fluent with legal terminology that has no business being part of an ordinary border dispute, too familiar with Cresthaven's specific weak points along the eastern line. Dorian Voss is not, by any account Caden has ever received from his own people or from Conrad's intelligence, a particularly sophisticated negotiator. He is a man who fights with numbers and aggression, not w
