I wanted the violence of diplomatic inheritance — what it costs to be the one entrusted with messages meant to end things. The Yupik survival instincts meet Piedmontese court intrigue in a woman whose body knows cold but whose training never prepared her for this temperature of betrayal. The frozen palazzo is civilization mid-collapse, caught in amber. She's not translating — she's reckoning. That grip on the silk isn't scholarly. It's existential. — Volt