No matter how I tried, I couldn't stop glancing over to it.

The chair in front of the mirror where Kyla Orlouge sat when she died.

Where most of my problems of the past few years originated.

Such a simple piece of furniture, really. Simple, utilitarian, utterly plain. And yet the person who sat in that chair, whose ghost probably haunted these halls with all the other poor souls who met their end here, it was the mystic's demise that changed so many plans and damned so many more.

"Place hasn't changed much since I was last in here a couple years ago," I casually remarked as I tried to find anything else, anything at all to focus my attention on. The decorative weapons that hung on the wall. The ornate furniture that decorated the otherwise desolate room. Paintings, tapestries, and other things, the only flourishes in the entire Sanctum.

"Oh?" My host cast me another one of her blank glances. "What for?"

"An argument," I replied flatly.

"Another argument," Red corrected.

I nodded. "That's all we did before I locked him under the mountain for a year. Just a bunch of angry bickering, the minute I got back from Eiskalt."

"You sound like you regret it."

My eyes flashed with unknowable, mixed emotion. "I regret a lot of things, lately." And then I changed the subject.