Moving to the edge of the terrace, she looked down on the city below. Wizard lights embroidered the streets, pooling in doorways. Carriages rattled along the Way, no doubt bound for one party or another. A wisp of music floated up to her—a basilka, it sounded like, playing Hanalea’s Lament.

Raisa shivered and turned away.

Returning to the small temple, she knelt again on the stone floor and began the Meditation of the Queens in a low, fierce voice.

“Hail Marianna ana’Lissa ana’Theraise ana’Adra ana’Doria ana’Julianna ana’Lara ana’Lucinda ana’Michaela ana’Helena ana’Rissa ana’Rosa ana’Althea ana’Isabella…” She continued through all thirty-two queens since the Breaking, ending, as always, with Hanalea ana’Maria. “Hear me! Your daughter Raisa calls on you.”

As she continued with the words of the prayer, the temple around her shimmered and faded into mist. The familiar lupine forms of the Gray Wolf queens came forward, sitting in a circle around her, curling their tails around their feet.

Here was green-eyed Althea, and gray-eyed Hanalea. And the blue-eyed wolf Raisa had seen at her mother’s memorial—slender and graceful, with pale fur and small delicate paws. Her form shimmered, pale and insubstantial. For a moment, Raisa thought she saw the image of a woman.

Raisa came forward on her knees. “Mother?” she whispered, her voice trembling.

The blue-eyed wolf ducked her head, as if ashamed, then turned tail and disappeared into the mist, her tail pluming behind her.

“Yes,” Althea said. “That was Marianna. She has not yet accepted her wolf form, I’m afraid.”

“But…” Raisa extended her hands as if she could drag her mother back. “I need to talk to her. I want to find out what happened. If—if it was an accident. Or if—”

“She won’t be able to speak to you,” Hanalea said, her gray eyes kind and sad. “Not for months. What we do—communication across the veil—it’s unnatural. It takes time to master.”

The implications of this penetrated slowly, like a chilly draft under the door. “Well, I need to know—did she kill herself? Was it an accident? And, if not, who killed her?” Raisa looked from Hanalea to Althea, hoping to read something in their wolf faces.

The Gray Wolf queens looked at each other. Althea put her ears back and showed her teeth at Hanalea. Hanalea shrugged, if wolves can be said to do such things.

“We’ve been given the privilege of remaining in the Spirits,” Althea said. “We watch over the City of Light instead of crossing to the shadowlands. With privileges come restrictions. We cannot change history by giving you information you wouldn’t know otherwise.”