There was a hole in one wall, taller and wider than she, so that Eve could see that the small, unoccupied room beyond had problems of its own. Shafts of wood were burrowed into the plaster or lay heaped on the floor. Her file cabinet was a mass of twisted metal, the contents ashes. The carpet was gone, simply gone, with the floor beneath scarred and scored. The window had been boarded up so that no light seeped through. The repair crew was coming that morning, but she had wanted to see it for herself, before it was swept clean.

She didn’t shudder. She had thought she would when she had been walking down the hall. The fear she had expected, had been willing to accept, didn’t come. In the hole left by fear, anger came, ripe and deep and cleansing.

All her files, her notes, her records—destroyed. She stepped in and kicked aside a lump of ceiling. Weeks, months, even years of work reduced to rubble in a matter of seconds. Some things could be replaced; other things were simply irreplaceable.

The picture she had had on her desk, her favorite one of her and Chris; it was part of the ashes. Gone, too, was the play she had written and the one she’d been working on. The tears that sprang to her eyes weren’t of sorrow, but of fury. Her work might have been rough, maybe it had even been foolish, but it had been her work. Lack of confidence and her own self-deprecating humor had caused her to file it away under F for Fantasies.

Now that dream was gone, blown apart by someone who didn’t even know her. They had taken away pieces of her life, and would have taken her life, as well, without a second thought.

They would pay, she promised herself as she stood among the wreckage. Somehow, someway, she would see to it personally.

“Eve.”

With the back of her wrist she swiped at her eyes before turning. “Chris!”

In that instant she was only a younger sister. The emotion and need swamped her as she scrambled over the wreckage and into her sister’s arms. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so glad.”

“Of course I’m here. I came the moment I heard.” Chris squeezed tightly as relief came and the hours of dread through her traveling eased. “I went to the palace first. I’ve never seen so much security there before. If it hadn’t been for Bennett I might still be arguing with the guards at the gates. Eve, for God’s sake, what’s going on?”

“It’s gone. Everything. The picture of us at the opening of my first play. It was on the desk. The little china cat Mom gave me when I was ten. I always took it with me. There’s nothing left of it, nothing at all.”