An argument near the table, and a moment of panic, and Sidonie shoving her away — and Tamsyn going down against the hard edge of the furniture, and then blood, and stillness, and no breath and no pulse when Sidonie knelt over her.

She had not understood, then, that none of it was real.

That the wine had been tampered with so her memory would fail her.

That the blood and the stillness had been staged for an audience of one terrified, drugged woman.

The how of it does not belong in this account, and it never will; what matters is that two people built a false death and made a grieving woman believe she was the killer.

That was the entire engine of the thing.