She dressed in the one spare tunic and skirt packed away in her knapsack. Her journey clothes lay in a pile on the chair where she’d fallen asleep. If she could find a nearby stream, she’d wash them and lay them out to dry, though in this damp, Imogen doubted anything truly dried. Her lips quirked at the thought of asking an ancient mage-king if he knew where the washing bats and lye buckets might be stored.

There was still no sign of Cededa after she’d dressed and eaten from her dwindling supplies of journey food. The city beyond the windows beckoned with all its mysteries and ancient secrets. Who knew when the king might return, and she wished to see Tineroth in the daylight.

The shadows had only marginally lightened when she opened her door a second time and stepped into the hallway. The palace was a maze of cloisters and stairs, and Imogen tried to remember the path they’d taken the previous night that brought her to this chamber.

After three corridors and several blind turns, she was hopelessly lost in the palace’s belly. Had she not been raised by Niamh and surrounded by her mother’s earth magic, Imogen might have thought it her imagination, but the halls and stairs in this vast place changed their direction each time she made a turn or descended stairs, as if the palace teased her.

She paused in the middle of a long gallery illuminated by gray light that streamed through broken windows on the opposite wall. From where she stood, she glimpsed spires and rooftops spilling over with the ubiquitous vines, a pale sun obscured by clouds.

Hands on her hips, she exhaled a frustrated sigh. “Do you mind?” She called out to the silence. The sudden sensation of another presence—curious and distant, vast—swept across her flesh, leaving chills in its wake. Something listened.

Afraid but determined to find the front door without wandering this unending labyrinth for the next several hours, Imogen held her ground. “I wish only to go outside. To see the city of my childhood fables.” She held out both hands, palms up. “No harm intended. No malice planned.”

A weighty pause, as if that which observed her considered her for a moment before making a decision. A mist gathered in the darkness of the hallway facing her, rolling across the floor like surf over sand. Imogen clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering and crushed the instinctive urge to run. Niamh’s wisdom echoed in her mind.

“You don’t run from that which you don’t know. Such cowardice elicits bad judgment. Gain your knowledge first. Then decide to stand or flee.”

Sentient, purposeful, the vapor roiled toward her, swirling around her feet until it moved onward, pausing at the top of a set of stairs as if waiting for her to follow. She did, keeping a safe distance back. It might look like mist, but it certainly didn’t act like it, and if she looked from the corner of her eye instead of directly at the fog, she saw ghostly hands, the faint traces of faces, and the train of a gown in that swirling miasma. Gooseflesh pebbled her arms and back. Revenants. Tineroth was not only ruined, it was haunted.