The carriage smelled like someone else's perfume and someone else's tears.
Clara pressed her back against the seat and counted the things she still owned. Not possessions — those were gone, stripped away layer by layer over the months since Valestra's men had taken her from the Wren shop on Threadneedle Street. Not clothes — she was wearing Seraphyne's sage green gown, which was not hers and had never been hers and still smelled faintly of a vampire's cold, cedar-laced skin. Not freedom — that had been sold at auction in Viregate, purchased by Rulien, passed to Branimir, and was now being transferred again, like a deed to a property that nobody wanted but everyone insisted on owning.
She counted what she still had.
