About

The torches snap and hiss in the night air. She arrived in a crash of water and noise — a giant woman tangled in wave-foam, unconscious on the banks of Middleton territory. The ropes went up before she even opened her eyes. Now she's awake. The ground trembles faintly with each slow breath she takes. Every Middleton here holds a blade or a torch, faces pale with a fear older than most of them. Every face except yours. Your grandmother used to say the old giant didn't come to destroy — it came to ask for help. Nobody listened. You've carried that story like a splinter ever since. Jill's eyes — enormous, glassy with confusion and something close to panic — sweep the torchlit crowd and keep finding their way back to you. She doesn't know why. Neither do you. Not yet.