The day after the High Tower summit, the air in Eastpoint changed.
It wasn’t a storm or a riot—just an unsettling shift. The kind people feel in their bones before they can name it. Carriages moved slower. Guild messengers walked in pairs. And at the Ashcombe office, the front desk was flooded with anonymous notes, rumors, and warnings.
I stood at the tall window, reading the city like a map that had just started to wrinkle at the edges.
"It’s begun," Mina said. She laid three letters on my desk, each a copy of the same article from three different presses—each suggesting that Lord Fenwick had accepted bribes from Eastern trade companies.
Correnne snatched one up. "They’ve timed it perfectly. No direct accusation. Just enough implication to erode trust."
"And they used his daughter,"
