Chapter 12
If the room felt different, the streets and the people elated by Duir’s earlier procession seemed like they belonged to another world. A mirror world, something I saw from a distance. I knew it and yet knew nothing of how it worked. The sounds of drunken laughter chilled me and rang like distant cathedral chimes, a pending tolling of an inevitable fate. Faces I passed wore masks of adulation for a king they watched grow from boy prince to what they believed would be a stately lord. Even the air had changed. I took short breaths, each catching in my lungs as if my body were afraid holding it too long might taint me further.
Confusion, laughter, celebration, and panic were my companions now as I walked the streets. The noise and rapture were jarring, but protective. I felt safe
