Janice
Janice did not sleep.
Sleep required a loosening. A surrender. And Janice had learned long ago that surrender invited ruin.
She lay on her back beneath embroidered covers, listening to the palace breathe—timber settling, distant torches crackling, the faint rhythm of guards changing posts below. The air should have felt settled. Safe. Controlled.
Instead it felt… thin.
Like the territory itself had exhaled and forgotten how to inhale again.
Janice sat up slowly and pressed her palm to her sternum. Her heart was steady. Her body calm.
But something in the magic—something woven through the land like invisible thread—had trembled earlier. Not enough to alarm anyone else. Not enough to be named.
Enough to irritate her.
She wrapped a dark cloak around her shoulders and stepped i
