Set in the Dominion of the Fallen universe,  about sixty years before The House of Shattered Wings starts. During the Great Houses War, the House of Aiguillon falls, and a servant girl of Annamite descent struggles to find safety in war-torn Paris.

In the end, as she had known she would, Huyen crept back to the House of Aiguillon.

Dawn was barely breaking over Paris: a sick, vague pink tinge to the maelstrom of spells that filled the entire sky like roiling clouds. No sun, no stars; merely the acrid taste of spent magic that settled in the lungs like the beginnings of a cough, and a haze over the cobblestones that could hide anything from explosives to chimeras.

The great gates hung open. Through the haze, Huyen caught a glimpse of bodies, lying like discarded puppets in the gardens; and of what had once been the corridors, now open to the winds, with the familiar peony wallpaper singed and torn–Huyen remembered running with one hand following the flowers, drawing a line through the corridor as a way to find her way back to the kitchens–another time, another age. The House had succumbed, and nothing would ever be the same.