The next morning began with the sound of a ceramic tray hitting the floor.
It was a dull sound—the kind that usually signaled a minor inconvenience in the dressing chamber. But when Elias looked up from the papers he had been reviewing since before dawn, he didn't see a flustered servant reaching for a cloth.
He saw Marya, a girl of nineteen who had entered the palace same time as him two years ago, collapsing.
There was no dramatic screaming or anything. The air in the room seemed to vanish as her lungs seized. She hit the rug with a heavy, wet thud, her body arching in a violent, silent convulsion. By the time Elias reached her, dropping to his knees and reaching for the resonance in his palms to soothe her nerves, her eyes had already rolled back into her head. A thin foam bubbled at the corners of her mouth.
