QUEEN’S steps clicked softly against the old, cold tiles as she made her way down the dimly lit hallway beneath the mansion’s grand floors. The deeper she went, the colder the air grew, an icy draft creeping around her ankles, slipping under her expensive silk pajamas and chilling her spine.

It felt wrong down here, like she was drifting through a place she shouldn’t be, the stale air pressing around her like unseen walls. She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself as if that would chase away the sensation that she was walking through the valley of the shadow of death itself.

Yet she pushed on, driven by that burning...