The small dining room’s easy morning quiet faded when the heavy timber door from the residential hallway unlatched with a dull click.

Marcus walked into the room, holding a small, tightly rolled-up scrap of parchment that looked slightly damp and wrinkled from the morning valley mist. He looked tired, his broad shoulders slightly hunched as he stopped near the edge of the long walnut table right behind Iris’s chair.

"A border scout just brought this up from the river line," Marcus said as he extended his hand, passing the paper directly to Kaelen. "Richard has two riders sitting on the neutral stone bridge right now. He sent this directly to...