The Public Declaration
The cathedral plaza held its breath the way stone always did—patient, unimpressed, old enough to have watched kingdoms rise and forget their own names. Lanterns hung in deliberate strands across the open space, glass globes warming the winter-dark into pools of honeyed light. A market ringed the edges in quiet order—bread, citrus, wool, paper flowers that pretended to be spring. Somewhere, a violin threaded a melody through the cold, and it didn't sound like romance so much as endurance. Snow wasn't falling. Not yet. The sky above the cathedral was stretched tight, black, and waiting. I stood at the edge of the open stone with Silas beside me and felt every eye without needing to look. European wolves didn't stare like the pack back home had. They didn't measure like a court. They w
- Writer
