It felt so strange to be back, as though all of Padmurak and Dharan-Tun had a been a dream, and yet it felt as I still were dreaming, and it was instead that pavilion and the well-dressed and powdered that were unreal—and I myself was unreal. How could I be at the Imperial court again? On Carteia or anywhere? How could any of it still exist when so much had changed? When I had endured so much?
