Sheepeater Cliff the haunted palace

she isn't prepared. not for any of it.

the trail of carnage, leading to her. . .body, oh, her unmoving corpse; and then Merrick's frenzied grief, and the way her brother tries desperately to hold himself together before beginning to piece together who had done this.

she knows. the scent rises all around them, heady, tangy with blood. if she had only succeeded when looking for Nyra so long ago—!

the woman has—had always—ruined her life.

her legs, exhausted from a dash to and from the mountain, give way. her gaze finds her mother's tattered dark fur and she sinks with an unhinged wail, akin to a painter's screech, something not of this world.

the cry subsides into deep and ugly sobs that wrack her entire body, and it is only Merrick's spoken pair sentences that bring her upright again,

though she does not want to.

if her mother's killers were not still living, she would rather die here, too.