She climbed the staircase slowly, her breath shallow, the steps swimming in front of her eyes. Nearly. Home. One of her gloved hands was clenched around the banister. The other, the trembling left hand, held fast to the cane. The tremor was continuous now, a soft shuddering that set her nerves on edge. As she neared the top, she heard the courtyard door open and close.

“Constance?” Irvine’s voice.

“I’m fine. Leave me to rest,” she half shouted. She’d reached the door to her old apartment. It was just the same, down to the scuff marks where she used to kick it shut and the two angry initials she’d scored into the wood with a penknife as a girl. C.R.

“Constance, wait!” He started to take the stairs two at a time.

She sighed and pushed the door open.

Her bedroom was a heap of junk. She leaned heavily on the doorframe, shaken. The bed was dusty and piled high with papers, its curtains ripped and ragged. The play chest at the foot of the bed—painted garish pink and yellow by Constance’s own childish hand—was barely discernible under a pile of upturned broken chairs. The main part of the room was a mass of furniture in various states of disrepair and smelled of old wood and rot. Weirdly, she could still see her hairbrush where she’d left it all those years ago on the dressing table, which was thick with dust, strung with cobwebs, and barricaded in the corner by the grimy window. She stepped inside, her mouth open, just as Irvine reached the landing.

“Constance…” His breath was even and slow, despite his swift climb up the tower. “I was trying to stop you from seeing this. I’m sorry.”

“What happened here?” Her voice was weak. She hated the sound of it.

“When the fog got worse, when the lightning and thunder started, everyone wanted a place in the castle—the air’s better up here, thinner and calmer. Most of the upper town moved in. The Pestilence has brought numbers down since then, of course … but at the time, space was at a premium.” He sighed. “Your father refused to let anyone stay in your room. And so…”

“It became a dumping ground. Guess that shows what everyone really thought of me.” She felt annoyingly close to tears.

“That’s not true, Constance. I think in some way he was keeping it for when you’d come back.”

He told me never to return, she thought, shaking her head. She turned to face him. “I had my enemies, even back then. The Duchess, for one.” She remembered with a jolt that the woman was dead. “I’ve been preparing myself to confront her, but now…”