The woman’s faded blue eyes turned to check the shadowed corners of the gloomy room. “Down in the lower reaches of the Keep, where those with exceptional talents go about their dark work, it is said that there be gifted among them who can speak with souls beyond the veil of life, those souls now in the world of the dead.”

Magda placed her trembling fingers on the creases in her own brow. “Tilly, you should know better than to believe such gossip.”

Tilly’s gaze again lifted to search the somber room lit only by thin streamers of light coming in the slits between the ill-fitting, warped shutters. The narrow slices of light revealed specks of dust floating almost motionless above the heavy wooden worktable set hard up against the stone wall.

The table bore the age-softened evidence of dark stains, cuts, and scars collected over centuries of varied use. The edges of the thick top had been irregularly rounded over and worn smooth by the touch of countless hands that had over the passage of time given the wood a polished, chestnut-colored patina.

Sitting at the table, facing the shuttered windows, Magda stared down into memories held in a small silver box sitting alone before her as she thought of all that was lost to her.

Everything was lost to her.

“Not mere gossip,” Tilly said softly, compassionately. “A friend I trust works in the nether reaches of the Keep. She knows things, sees things. She says that some of those whose work it is to know about the world of the dead have not merely spoken to those passed on, but have done more.”

“More?” Magda couldn’t bring herself to look up from the memories in the box. “What are you saying?”

“My friend says that the gifted down there may even have ways to bring people back from the world of the dead. What I’m saying is that maybe you could have him brought back.”

Elbows on the table, Magda pressed her fingertips to her temples as she struggled to keep the tears from springing anew. She stared down at a dried flower he had once given her, a rare white flower he had climbed all day to retrieve. He had called her his young, fierce flower and said that only such a rare and beautiful thing befit her.

So why would he choose to abandon her in this way?

“Brought back? From the dead?” Magda slowly shook her head as she sighed. “Dear spirits, Tilly, what has gotten into you?”

The woman set down her wooden pail and let the washrag she was holding slip into the soapy water. She leaned down a bit more, as if to make sure that no one could hear, even though there was no one else in the cluttered, rarely used storage room.