She smelled the rancid stench as she stood at the bottom of the steps. Modina glanced around with greater interest. That awful smell triggered a memory. There was a place, a small room that was cold, dark, and lacked any windows. She could almost taste it.

Modina approached a small wooden door. With a shaking hand, she pulled it open. Inside was a small pantry filled with sacks of flour and grain. This was not the room, but the smell was stronger there.

There was another place—small like this—small, dark, and evil. The thought came at her with the force of a forgotten nightmare. Black, earthy, and cold, a splashing and a ratcheting that echoed ominously, the wails of lost souls crying for mercy and finding none. She had been one of them. She had cried aloud in the dark until she could cry no more, and always the smell of dirt penetrated her nostrils and the dampness of the dirt floor soaked into her skin. A sudden realization jolted her.

I’m remembering my grave! I am dead. I am a ghost.

She looked at her hands—this was not life. The darkness closed in all around her, growing deeper, swallowing her, smothering her.

“Are you all right, Your Eminence?”

“Ya think she’s sick again?”

“Don’t be daft. She’s just upset. You can see that well enough, can’t ya?”

“Poor thing, she’s so fragile.”

“Remember who you’re speaking of. That lass slew Rufus’s Bane!”

“You remember who you’re speaking of, that lass indeed! By Maribor’s beard, she’s the empress!”

“Out of my way,” Amilia growled as she shooed the crowd like a yard full of chickens.

She was in no mood to be polite. Fear made her voice harsh, and it lacked the familiar tone of a fellow kitchen worker—it was the voice of an angry noblewoman. The servants scattered. Modina sat on the floor with her back against the wall. She was weeping softly with her hands covering her face.

“What did you do to her?” Amilia snapped accusingly while glaring at the lot of them.

“Nothing!” Leif said, defending them.

Leif, the butcher and assistant cook, was a scrawny little man with thick dark hair covering his arms and chest but absent from his balding head. Amilia had never cared for him, and the thought that he, or any of them, might have hurt Modina made her blood boil.

“No one was even near her. I swear!”

“That’s right,” Cora confirmed. The dairymaid was a sweet, simple girl who churned the butter each morning and always added too much salt. “She just sat and started crying.”

Amilia knew better than to listen to Leif, but Cora was trustworthy. “All right,” she told them. “Leave her be. Back to work, all of you.”

They were slow to respond until Amilia gave them a threatening glare.