Andrea’s POV
The doors didn’t slam.
They struck. The sound rang through the northern audience hall, bouncing off pillars carved with frost sigils… sigils that, according to old ministers, belonged to my bloodline long before Central ever declared itself the axis of power.
I didn’t rise. I didn’t need to. I already knew who it was.
Ryzon never softened his presence. His boots cut across the marble, each step sharp, deliberate. Too precise. Too angry for I don’t know what.
I folded the parchment in my hands… grain reports from the eastern farmlands. Frost blight had ruined nearly a third of the harvest.
I’d seen it myself: cracked canals, storage houses half empty, children wrapped in cloaks patched so many times they barely held together.
I hadn’t imagined their suffering. I had wal
