She did not allow their voices to remind her of Dashiell. Dashiell, like Ethan, was no longer, and she, Sutton Montclair, was a new woman without them. She had no past. She had no trials or travails. She was a mystery unto herself.

The Seine was only a seven-minute walk from her flat. She took the Left Bank by storm, arms practically swinging as she strolled along the sinuous water toward Notre-Dame, her chin up. A grain of sand she may be, but she was a Parisian grain now, and the tourists enjoying the day watched her walk by with admiration. She was their cliché—the gorgeous Parisian woman in the elegant clothes walking along the Seine. If only, they’d think. If only we could be so glamorous. There truly is nothing more beguiling than a Parisian woman.

The colors. The colors of Paris. So overwhelming. Soft pinks and vibrant yellows, inky blacks and musty greens, the creamy white marble, the sunlit golds. Sutton couldn’t stop her eyes from roving, caressing each new sight, her ears attuned to every squeak of bicycle wheel, honk of horn, squawk of birds, all borne to her on whispers of the wind.

It was so much, so overwhelming, it brought tears to her eyes, so she fixed her gaze straight ahead on the gentle blue sky beyond the satiny gray bridges, looking neither right nor left until she could get her emotions under control. A breath later, or maybe it was two, the idea came to her. She rarely had to search for ideas—they had a tendency to show up unannounced, with fully formed characters, in vivid mental images, the scenes unfolding before her very eyes.

She saw a woman, with long, flowing red hair. Her clothing said eighteenth century, the skirts in layers of cream with a heavily ruched green velvet overlay, embroidered russet-and-gold leaves on the bodice. She was on a horse, approaching a large castle. There was some sort of celebration—yes, a marriage. She was arriving at the castle walls; all hail the new Queen. But it wasn’t in the past, it was set in the future. A future where the world had collapsed, and a marriage between warring factions would help arrest the coming apocalypse.

Sutton smiled to herself.

It didn’t matter the time period, nor the end result of the story. Was there a woman on earth who didn’t want to dress in heavy silks and ride a horse sidesaddle through a portcullis while rose petals rained down on her upturned face and throngs of people cried her name with joy?