Eating. Talking. Meeting people. Slow dancing to the music the orchestra was playing.
All around us the celebration burned brightly, the palace hall a whirl of gowns and silks, laughter spilling like wine, the scent of roasted venison mingling with the sweetness of candied fruits. Crystal glasses chimed. Men and women clung to one another as though the world itself existed only in their dance.
But Diana and I? We weren't doing any of this.
We sat in the section reserved for the council, rather brainstorming—nothing mattered more than the mystery of what had truly happened to me that fateful night, almost a year ago.
The night of my supposed death. The night I should have been gone. The memory clung to me like smoke, always just behind my ribs.
