She’d been tracking after that star-woman. For revenge, or boredom, or whatever. She’d followed her to a bizarre, sagging estate, much more rundown than Maggie’s manor-house in the north. Light and bawdy laughter spills from its windows. Yakone keeps to the dark beyond the frenzy, a shadow with red eyes.

Through a couple crooked slats, she sees bodies pressed shoulder-to-shoulder and tails sweeping from low tables. Someone howls a song off-key and another tackles them for it. It’s chaotic and repulsive and alive in a way that makes her deeply depressed.

And pathetic.

The whole structure sways with laughter— joy keeping it upright. It would be easy, the muradoii thinks, to slip in and pretend she belongs there. She casts another look at the glowing windows, staring at the way light warms the snow like spilled honey. Then she melts back towards the dark.

“Idiots.”

She hates parties.