When she had first come to the palace, everyone had avoided her the way one evades a dog known to bite. After her speech, those few members of the palace staff she chanced upon had looked at her with affectionate admiration and an unspoken understanding, as if acknowledging that they finally comprehended her previous behavior. The new gowns had the unintended effect of turning admiration into adoration, as the white purity and modest simplicity gave Modina an angelic aura. She had transformed from the mad empress to the saintly—although troubled—high priestess.

Everyone attributed Modina’s recovery to Amilia’s healing powers. What she had said on the balcony was the truth. Amilia had saved her, if saved was the right word. Modina did not feel saved.

Ever since Dahlgren, she had been drowning in overwhelming terrors that she could not face. Amilia had pulled her to shore, but no one could call her existence living. There had been a time, long, long ago, when she would have said that life carried hope for a better tomorrow, but for her, hope was a dream that had blown away on a midsummer’s night. The horrors were all that remained, calling to her, threatening to pull her under again. It would be easy to give in, to close her eyes and sink to the bottom once more, but if pretending to live could help Amilia, then she would. Amilia had become a tiny point of light in a sea of darkness, the singular star Modina steered by, and it did not matter where that light led.

Like most afternoons, Modina wandered the sequestered halls and chambers like a ghost searching for something long forgotten. She heard that people with missing limbs felt an itching in a phantom leg or arm. Perhaps it was the same for her, as she struggled to scratch at her missing life.

The smell of food indicated she was near the kitchen. Modina did not recall the last time she had eaten, but she was not hungry. Ghosts did not get hungry, at least not for food. She had come to the bottom of the stairs. To the right, cupboards lined a narrow room holding plates, goblets, candles, and utensils. To the left, folded linens were stacked on shelves. Filled with laboring servants and steam, the place was hot and noisy.

Modina spotted the big elkhound sleeping in the corner of the kitchen and immediately recalled that his name was Red. She had not been down this way in a long time, not since Saldur had caught her feeding the dog. That was the first day since her father had died that she could remember clearly. Before that—nothing—nothing but … rotten eggs.