Laurel was a lovely child in front of her. If Sia did not know her sister so well, perhaps she would have loved Laurel just as much as everyone else did. After all, people were drawn to beauty. They were drawn to golden hair and emerald eyes and a face that was the personification of a summer day.

“Sia, what are you doing here?” Laurel asked. Her question from the outside sounded innocent, but Sia knew the real meaning behind it. Sia was meant to stay in her room when they were expecting guests. Normally, they were not so strict, but on the days when they expected guests Sia was restricted to her room. Society thought that the Kaldors’ third child was sickly, often restricted to her bed with some flu or the other.

It wasn’t entirely false. Sia was often ill as a child. She was small for her age, and the very picture of infection no matter how much rouge her mother had applied to her face once she got older. Now though, it must have been one of those occasional days where she was untouched by illness.

“Good morning, Laurel,” Sia said. She hoped her false smile was convincing. She had loved Laurel in the past, although that love had been tinged by jealousy, and the jealousy had been covered in guilt. She saw why others loved Laurel, and as a child, she had felt like a villain for even thinking slightly badly about her perfect sister.

“We have guests on their way,” Laurel said. “Mother told you this already. Go back to your room.”

As a child she had never questioned why she’d had to hide away even when she was feeling well.

“Who is coming?” she asked.

“It is none of your business,” Laurel said. Her sister had a talent for saying terrible things in a good-natured way. “You should go back and rest.”

Sia knew what would happen if she refused. She was small enough to carried away kicking and screaming. She had outgrown the tantrums of children years before. So she smiled away and turned away. Her one signal of rebellion was not offering her sister a proper greeting.

Her room surrounded her, and it felt so empty. It was small, but made larger by the absence of proper furniture and decoration. The visits to Laurel’s quarters had been infrequent when she was a child, but it had always felt like a special treat to be let in. With curious eyes she had taken in everything in Laurel’s rooms. Every time she visited there was something new and beautiful to see. The curtains were replaced each season, the walls painted new every year, the bed and beddings upgraded each time some more luxurious or soft fabric was found.

Sia’s own room was an afterthought. The expensive furnishings were used for long enough and then given to servants who wanted them. There were no paintings on her walls, and the color had faded over time from a cornflower blue to something darker and sadder. Where the paint was chipping, she could see the plaster underneath.

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She had been so generous in her memories, forgetting the barrenness of her childhood. Her parents had kept her fed as a child, and she had a roof over her head, but she had been deprived of so many things. She had been denied proper education with the excuse that she did not have the intellect for it, exposure to the world because of her sickness. She had been denied friends. Laurel held her tea parties in the garden, and Sia had yearned to join in. She had looked in from her bedroom window. At first when she was too young, a kindly maid had told her that it was because she was too young. But even when they were both adults, Laurel was the only one with friends, while Sia was at best, her handmaiden.

Because of her illness, had they always considered her a wasted investment?

She recalled what Laurel told her, before her death. Laurel had told her that Sia was only meeting her natural end, that her purpose had been to die.

Only Sia hadn’t even done that properly. She was somehow back in her old home. It had been hours since she’d collapsed in the cell, Laurel growing blurry as her eyes closed. No delusion could last so long. And did dead people dream? She didn’t know. She had never been a religious person in her first life.

She decided to sleep instead, finding a little warmth beneath her threadbare blankets. When she woke, her lunch was on a tray next to her bed. It had grown cold, but she ate readily. Her body wasn’t all that hungry, but her mind was. The last meal she remembered was moldy bread, the last drink water that had tasted of mud.

Sia threw her head back after the first sip of her soup. Even leftovers and cold food tasted good when they were made by the Kaldor chefs. Hell or earth or whatever place she was in, at least they had the decency to feed her.

Once she was done with her meal, she went to her window. The window overlooked the garden, and if it was Laurel’s friends who had come to visit, they almost always had tea in the gazebo.

People were in the garden, but they weren’t Laurel or her friends. Her father rarely made the effort of coming out to host guests. Her mother sometimes did, but her father usually stayed to his offices, focusing more on his work and making friends with the neighboring nobility or landlords.

But her father now was obsequious and all pleasing laughter. It was a strange appearance on him, Sia thought. He only reserved stern grimaces for her. Her siblings got soft, wide contented smiles of pride. Now, whoever the guests were, he wanted to impress them. He wanted their favor.

Perhaps the father she had in the afterlife was different. Among the guests, there was a little boy, around Sia’s age.

She remembered.

Perhaps this was the day that things had truly started going wrong. The Kaldors were neither the highly ranked nobility, nor were they extremely wealthy. They were well off and they were well respected, but they were one among a few dozen other noble families with a similar pedigree and wealth. Furthermore, their lands were in the north, where farming was difficult and winters were unforgiving. Their wealth did not come so easy.

But the royal family had visited, and the queen had taken a liking to Laureline. Sia had slept that day, and heard gossip from the maids about how the queen had loved the little miss.

She had cried that she had missed the royal family, that she had been in her room. Now, she opened the window a little to hear what she could of the conversation. This time at least, she could learn first-hand what happened during the visit.