Xander caught her near the door, resting a hand softly on her right arm. “I was worried about you. I thought I was doing you a favor by letting you sleep, but…”

“It’s all right,” she said, suppressing her annoyance and forcing a smile. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

He squeezed her arm.

“You’d better leave me before people start talking,” Constance added. Xander’s face grew respectful. He nodded at her and took his place among the other Wise Men.

The crowd parted for her, murmuring, as she entered the hall. She nodded as she passed, trying to appear stately and unhurried, as if she shouldn’t have been the first inside.

She approached the platform that had been set up in the center of the hall, in front of the large trapdoors, whispers gradually falling to silence. Her father had been dressed in the black robes of the dead, his limbs straightened out, the mess cleaned from his face. The wound on his head had been bound in black bandages. Constance drew closer, remembered the pool of blood soaking into her boots, shivered. The Duke’s face was as pale as marble, his cheekbones prominent, his brows furrowed, and his mouth set in a hard line. His eyes had been replaced by glittering sapphires and were fixed on the ceiling far above. He didn’t look like himself at all. He didn’t even look at peace. He looked enraged.

Winton stood vigil on the other side of the platform, dressed in dark purple: composed, silent, and very pale. He shot her a wavering smile, and she noticed his fingers were trembling. She felt a stab of guilt as she remembered promising to visit him. Xander’s visit had … distracted her. All around the hall’s periphery, the city guard watched, short cloaks shifting in the subtle breeze from the open door. Weapons were forbidden at sacred ceremonies, and their belts looked curiously naked. Cryptlings in cowled gray habits waited at the entrance to the crypts, kneeling, their heads lowered.

The ceremony began, the mourners touching their heads, lips, and hearts in the old sign of reverence as they started to pray. The words sounded distantly familiar, but Constance remained silent and still. She was pledged to another kind of divinity. She followed, however, as the bearers lifted the Duke’s broken body on its plain wooden plank and carried him to the trapdoors. As the doors opened, the stale, cold air that had grown so familiar in the past five days rushed into her face. She looked at Winton. His eyes were brimming with tears as he faced the dark steps downward.