Her room was cold and the quilt had slipped away while she thrashed about in her sleep. Even as the dream faded from her mind, she tried to call it back so she could piece together the remnants of her too-familiar nightmare. Her thoughts grappled with the impression that this time there had been something different about the dream, something she ought to remember because one particular image had been so vivid. The same dream had tormented her since she was five years old. It always began with a sense of doom for, after so many years, she knew what was going to happen and knew there was nothing she could do to prevent the horror. Once again she was a child and back in Monteferro. She had run away from her nurse and was playing a game of hide-and-seek, peeping into every room she came to as she explored the ducal palace, and hoping the nurse would not find her. She knew she was being naughty and knew both her mother and the nurse would be annoyed with her, but she was having so much fun that she didn’t care a bit what punishment they decreed when they finally located her.
