If pastries are the mortar binding my fledgling peace together, paperwork is the quarry stone: heavy, dull, unavoidable. By late‐morning the throne room resembled a siege camp laid with parchment fortifications. Auditors hauled ledgers as if they were ballistae, ink pots bristled like arrow quivers, and murmured figures drifted through the air in ominous clouds ("seven percent export levy," "fourteenth sub-tariff repeal," "cost of sugar glaze per capita").
I, Elyzara‐who-would‐be-peacemaker, sat at the long council table armed with nothing but a quill, half a cinnamon roll, and the faint scent of Velka's soap lingering on my sleeve. The cinnamon roll was theoretically a morale booster. In practice, it was a target: Lord Vastrid had already eyed it twice as though suspecting subversive frosting.
