“Your Highness Queen, Isabell said so, Lady. I can only follow her orders.”

“Where is everyone? Why is it so eerily quiet?” I asked the maid, my voice barely above a whisper.

“They’ve all gone on pilgrimage, Lady.”

I nodded and eased myself into a chair at the dining table, waving off the maids’ offers of help with a polite but firm hand. My stomach churned like a storm-tossed sea, my heart pounding erratically, sending waves of unsteadiness through my limbs. My body throbbed with exhaustion, and my vision blurred at the edges, the room spinning as if I’d been strapped to a relentless merry-go-round.

Something was terribly wrong. This...