The map was bleeding.
Iris had noticed it three days ago, just a small crimson stain spreading across the parchment where the Tannis River should have been. She'd assumed it was wine—her father had been known to work late into the night with a glass at his elbow, and his hands weren't as steady as they'd once been. But wine dried brown, and this stayed red. Wet. Warm to the touch.
Now the stain had spread to cover half the Western Territories, obliterating towns her father had spent months charting, swallowing roads that hadn't existed until he'd drawn them into being.
Because that was the thing about her father's maps. They didn't just show the world. They made it.
