Windsor, the first week of January.
The frost hadn't lifted in days.
The city looked beautiful from afar — roofs glazed in silver, smoke rising in slow columns from the chimneys — but up close, it was only brittle, frozen, dangerous.
The kind of cold that cracked marble and split wood, that made breath look like ghosts.
And in the stillness, something was moving again.
The Morning Papers
It began quietly, as all returns do.
A single article appeared in the Windsor Chronicle, unsigned, but elegant in tone — too polished, too sharp for any of the usual parliamentary scribes.
"Power," it read, "is rarely lost; it merely changes its mask. The hand that appears to fall is often the one that lifts the blade."
By midday, every salon, café, and private office in the capital was buzzing.
Who had written it?
Some said it was a warning. Others, a confession.
By afternoon, the whispers had found their shape.
The name Christopher Cross was being spoken again.
Serena
