Kelsea closed her eyes and saw her mother, the woman she had pictured throughout her childhood, the white queen on the horse. But the vision had already darkened. The people who cheered the Queen were scarecrows, gaunt with long starvation. The wreath of flowers on her head had withered. Her horse’s mouth was rotting away with disease. And the woman herself . . . a crawling, servile thing, her skin white as a corpse and yet bathed in shadow.
