Lady Bianca’s Last Breath

Lady Bianca had always lived as if each moment was a performance meant for the most exacting of audiences. Even in frail health, she kept the air of a woman who had never learned to ask for pity. Her shawl was shawl enough to disguise weakness in the daytime; at night, it was her armor against a world that had made her a queen of grudges.

When the news of Marcus’s death reached her, it struck not only at the center of her grief but at something deeper, the idea ...