“She pressed her palms flat against the cold stone windowsill and forced herself to breathe. The chill bit into her skin like teeth — sharp, immediate, grounding. Outside, Aashirvaad Nagari sprawled beneath a burial shroud of snow. The white-and-gold domed buildings of the capital stood silent in the pre-dawn grey, their surfaces crusted with ice that caught no light because there was no light to catch. The city was dying. She could smell it — the faint sourness of hunger that drifted up from the lower quarters, mixing with woodsmoke and the metallic tang of frost.”