Olga left the bedroom without putting on slippers, without taking the silk wrap that hung on the post beside the bed, without doing any of the small reflexive things a woman of her station performed without thought before stepping into a corridor that belonged to another family.
The chaos in her head had no room for accessories.
The chaos in her head had no room for anything other than the single, intolerable fact that the man she had spent decades sleeping beside, the man who had stood at the head of her daughter's nursery the morning she was born and watched her sleep with the careful eye, had killed her firstborn.
This betrayal felt instead like the floor of her own house had been quietly excavated below her for years, and she had only just been told.
Her bare feet made no sound against the runner. The Palace was sleeping. She did not know what she was going to say to Cixi when she reached her.
