Eliose:
I wasn’t supposed to be here. At least, that’s what half the room thought, I could feel it in the way their eyes lingered a second too long. The way their shoulders stiffened when I stepped closer to the table. The way conversations dipped just slightly whenever I spoke. And I knew that they wanted nothing more than for me to get out of that room as quickly as possible so that they can go back to doing whatever it was that they wanted to do.
It didn’t bother me, though.
I had lived in worse. And I was still was here.
Plus, that feeling wasn’t going away anytime soon. They needed a while to trust me, and with everything going on, I didn’t expect that to happen for a long time.
I leaned over the table, my fingers pressing lightly against the edge of one of the maps as I traced
