Elia’s revenge, which Isabelle painted into the smoke and fires of a burning city, was … excessive, even by Fenice standards. She remembered his coldness, the careful scraping away of every human emotion, the excision of every human virtue as he let his uncle’s plan develop. He married the substitute, he got her with child, and framed his uncle for their gruesome murder. He had watched, empty and triumphant, as his uncle burned at the stake. Isabelle’s presence in the everdream grew sick and chilled. Elia’s pain she could absorb, but swallowing his hatred was like swallowing a sewer: loathsome, poisonous, corrupting.

Isabelle’s phantom fingers trembled and she painted the bloody corpse of an innocent child onto the role of her misdeeds, for as she tamed the memory and took it in, she participated in it. Her many lives were the strangest sort of reincarnation. It was not as if her soul passed forward through time from body to body, but rather that it passed backwards to its origin and root. She could not choose which parts of the past she kept, only how she would cope with them going forward.

Other experiences, while not so vile, were equally hard to place within her current incarnation. She had little experience with carnal pleasures. She had no idea what to do with the brain-fogging, jittery urgency of a young man’s lust, or the nervous exhilaration of a young woman’s first sexual encounter. Touching these feelings kept bringing up thoughts of Bitterlich, and by thoughts she meant wholly indecorous and downright libidinous fantasies. Surely it was shameful to conscript him into her lickerish daydreams, especially given his stated disinterest in reciprocation.

Nonsense. It was less a word and more of an emotion tugging on her from one of her greater grandmothers, Lissa the courtesan.

Having these ghosts in her head was like having a whole pack of willful hounds, each dragging her toward their particular obsession. Lissa had been a consort of doges and generals, and had proved an inveterate matchmaker, breaking and bonding couples in her attempt to reshape the Vecci system of house alliances.

Isabelle reeled in Lissa’s tether, bringing her close enough to the present moment that she appeared as an apparition, giving the woman enough breath to form new thoughts and speech. She looked no more than Isabelle’s age, though far more flamboyant, with luscious flesh and a great plume of blue-black feathers.

“What do you mean, nonsense?” Isabelle asked.

“The beast-man hangs on your every word,” said Grandma Lissa. “Primps, preens.”

Isabelle bristled at the insult to Bitterlich’s dignity, but arguing with her ancestors was about as futile as yelling at a gravestone.

“Bitterlich says he’s not interested in me.” Isabelle took him at his word.