Chancellor Dawson burst into his office without bothering to close the door behind him, yanking at the tie that felt as if it were strangling the air from his lungs. He let out a ragged breath and collapsed into the revolving chair behind his desk, leaning back until the leather creaked and the world steadied.
The meeting had been a trial by menace. Sharing a room with those monsters had been worse than any interrogation. It had been physically exhausting and bone-draining. Even now he could still feel the weight of their gazes, a pressure that made his scalp prickle with unease.
Before he assumed the seat as Chancellor of the West, he'd heard stories of beastly men in the mountains of the North, but they were not the bedtime stories he'd once shrugged off as a boy; they were as real as
