It began before dawn.
By the time the first light touched Ashcombe’s frostbitten towers, the piece had already spread like wildfire. Not a whisper, not a rumor—this time, it was a reckoning. Every Courier Guild station had distributed it by candlelight, with wet ink and shaking hands. The Queen’s secret advisor, named. The foreign bribes, detailed. The starving provinces, exposed like an open wound.
No satire. No mask. No metaphor. Just ink and blood.
I stood at the balcony of my chamber, wind clawing at my robe, as the first messenger arrived below. Another. Then two more. By midmorning, there were seven couriers at the gates—three from noble houses, two from the Palace, and one from the Crown’s solicitor. One carried a black envelope.
“They're calling for trials,” Harroway said from
