She stopped several times to listen for pursuing footsteps. None. In the distance, somebody retched against a wall, the wet slap of their vomit echoing through the night. She followed a vaguely familiar route—a route she remembered, though much changed by time and darkness and the cloying fog. The world rocked subtly under her feet, her breathing slightly rough. Though she had watered her wine surreptitiously, she could not have abstained altogether; somebody would have noticed, wondered at her soberness. Everyone else was drunk almost horizontal, staggering to their beds with eyes half-closed.

One thing soon became clear: it was years since anyone had visited the pleasure gardens for pleasure. Constance drew to a halt at the gardens’ edge, scanning the weird and twisted shapes looming from the flickering cloud for a form resembling Lord Irvine’s. The storm cloud had had a curious effect on the gardens. The formal flower beds at her feet were a mass of rotten vegetation, crawling with monstrous centipedes and fat maggots glistening in the lamplight. The raised herb garden beyond, next to the kitchens, had crumbled, the mist choking into strange, viscous cobwebs catching moonlight between twigs of dead rosemary and thyme. Here and there, flashes of green-blue lightning cast flickering shadows across the lawn beyond. Fungi flourished, bulbous growths latching to the slender trunks of the naked, withered orchard beside the castle’s wall. Naked branches cut the hazy moonlit sky into ragged segments.

This ghastly scene felt like a bad omen, a warning. Constance glanced over her shoulder, but quickly steeled her resolve. A memory returned to her with frightening clarity: the bare brick walls of the small reflection chamber, the deep pool in the floor, a voice emanating from nothing, perhaps from Constance herself, perhaps from someone hidden. How could she have known? She had been forced to stare at the pool for countless hours, her knees hurting beyond the point of pain, the water reflecting her own exhausted, masklike expression. Pursue the things you fear, the voice had said. If you do not seek them first, they will seek you.

She shook away the memory and ventured deeper into the complex of elaborately knotted beds and twisted footpaths, stepping carefully among the strange white roots that pried apart the paving stones. She jumped at the sound of movement, but it was only a rat, scurrying into the dead reeds beside the stagnant fountain. Her lamplight caught on the face of a statue, its cherubic delight made grotesque by streaks of black, like tears.