A chill wind heralded ill tidings as Eleanor stood amidst the agency’s cmor, the kettle’s steam rising like a specter. Word had come—Raymond Fairfax, the Prime Minister, austere in his bck frock coat, had penned a decree from his marble-cd chambers: the relief houses, dens of “waste and idleness,” were to shut their doors. The news struck the hall like a thundercp; the poor wailed, clutching empty bowls, while clerks shuffled papers, their faces pinched with unease. Eleanor’s hands faltered, broth spshing her apron, and she felt the ground tilt beneath her.

  She marched to the overseer, a gaunt man with a ledger’s cold heart. “This is my life,” she pleaded, her voice raw, her patched skirts trembling. “My son starves, my parents fade—where else can I turn?” He peered over his spectacles, his mouth a thin line. “Orders, Mrs. Harrington. You’re done here.” The words fell like a guillotine, severing her fragile tether. She stumbled out, the river’s fog swallowing her, its dank fingers curling about her throat as Wolthrope’s spires loomed indifferent.

  Homeward, she clutched James’s coat, its wool a talisman against despair. Eldric waited by the hearth, his bird song faint on his lips. “Mama’s quiet,” he said, and she sank beside him, folding him into her arms—a shield against the truth she could not voice. Margaret rocked, muttering of lost harvests, and Henry’s breath rattled, his stare fixed on shadows. Three shillings gone, their bread reduced to air—she saw hunger’s specter in their sunken cheeks, sharper now than ever.

  Eleanor’s mind churned: Fairfax’s bde had not spared the me nor the widowed; it cut with a nobleman’s disdain, heedless of the lives it bled dry. She pressed her face to Eldric’s hair, his warmth a fleeting refuge, and wept silently. The agency—her purpose, her frail hope—y sin, and with it, the st rampart between her family and the abyss that yawned ever wider.