The Tower
The Queen stood in the tower, before the tall window that overlooked the kingdom. Her gaze swept the horizon, the courtyard below, the acorn tree standing solitary and stubborn against the wind.
She did not turn when he appeared beside her. Jack moved without announcement, without flourish. His presence was as it always was—sharp, precise, inescapable.
In his hand, a ledger. He extended it to her.
She did not look.
“How long did you know?” His voice was soft steel, cut low, deliberate.
Her eyes flicked to his. Cold to cold, without tremor. An understanding passed between them—the kind born of countless nights when he had seen her bleed, seen her weep, seen her rise again.
But this was not that moment.
This was the one he had waited for. The one he never expected would come.
“I knew long before you did, Brother.”
He didn’t ask the next question. He didn’t need to. She had never asked it of him, and she never would.
Jack understood why he had been summoned.
She gave the smallest nod, then turned her face back to the kingdom.
He left the tower, his ledger in hand. He already knew what he had been asked to do.