Sophie had not the blood of Deschain in her, had not one tenth the resilience of Aurora, and so, when Balthazar's mind reached out to draw her into the elegantly crafted nightmare, she was subsumed, utterly, into its reality.  It did not occur to her to question what had happened, where she was, all of that had been provided with the clarity of dream logic, into her mind.<br/><br/>Wearing the gray prison tunic of sack-cloth, her hair hanging limp and listless about a face that had paled in captivity, she lifted tear filled eyes at Balthazar, flying up and to her knees as the King approached.  "Majesty, you must believe me.  I had no idea what those letters contained.  I only obeyed my father's command.  It was never my wish to commit treason against you, sire."<br/><br/>--==--<br/><br/>The handful of texts that had survived and had been penned by her ancestor's own hand had long since been locked in the restricted section of the library, which she had access to, but never before the inclination to investigate.  But all the same, some piece of information had crossed her eyes at some point in her studies, perhaps a text she'd been made to copy as punishment for some infraction, and Aurora found herself repeating the words in the ancient book as she changed from her soiled, worn riding clothes and donned instead clean, serviceable clothes in muted colors of dark grey, something appropriate for exploring forbidden and forgotten places, but far from her usual splendor.<br/><br/>She left her apartments, pausing as she heard the unconscious Sophie whimper, and smiling as she imagined what delights her grandsire was showing her.  She lingered in the hallways, in an alcove containing a bust of Mirmian the Builder, an ancestor of her proud line, tracing the cool, marble profile of the ancient king.  Some bit of movement caught her eye; she turned, her voice a whisper.  "Darius?"