Cecilia lay alone on the vast bed, back in Eastiel's main chamber. Her husbands were not with her. She had asked for a moment.
From the next room, the low, vehement murmur of Angela's voice filtered through the heavy door. It was a relentless, grounding stream of reality.
The gritty details of her intelligence network laid bare. Dates, locations, witness accounts, the cold logistics of sacrilege. A clinical autopsy of a crime not yet committed. Cecilia didn't need to hear the words. She already knew the corpse.
She lay on her side, staring at nothing. Sleep would be unreachable across a sea of wretched images. The ditch, dragon bones gleaming under a thief's torch, Oathran's grey eyes forever closed.
Her own eyes were dry now, wide open and unseeing, reflecting the faint glow of the single sconce left burning.
The door opened without a sound, a sliver of warmer light from the adjoining room cutting across the floor before it was swallowed by the gloom.
