The room Marieke has taken upstairs at the Wanderer's Inn is a far cry from her lavishly and lovingly decorated bedroom at the home she once shared with Echo... but it has the great advantage of not putting her under the same roof as Echo. Her anger toward her sister-in-soul has not abated; in Marie's mind, Echo betrayed her, and for that there is no forgiveness yet.

Marie is seldom seen at all these days; her meals are brought to her, and she leaves only to read the public notices and respond to them. Nb's final cruelty to her, when he seized her hand and forced her to sign the divorce scroll as if she agreed to it, has left her stunned. No matter that such a divorce should surely not be legal... Nb has powerful friends, and he may well have already been granted the divorce on the strength of her falsely-acquired signature. In that case, she is living in a state of mortal sin, and her very soul is in peril of damnation. Though Marie is in many ways a casual Catholic, there are some aspects of canon law which she feels must not be violated... the rule against divorce being one of these... and so she is deeply frightened.

The news that Catz had given birth to Nb's son Klayeth infuriated her even as it filled her with despair. She who suspects Catz of so much now wonders how anyone who was so near to delivering a child could have killed the foul demon K'tayan... she thinks there was some collusion, some trickery, involved in Nb's release, something he will pay for dearly sooner or later. This, on top of the rumors she heard that Catz herself set up the attack on Marie solely in order to gain Marie's confidence, was all she needed to forget the promise she now felt she never should have made, that she would never call Catz a whore again.

The threats in response to her angry words she does not take especially seriously. That anyone (other than Catz, who in Marie's opinion is capable of anything) would actually consider killing her over a few angry words seems to her ridiculous.

It is not really because of the threats that she remains alone in her rented room most of the time... it is the deep misery in her soul that keeps her in solitude. Once she ran from the realms, only to be caught by Arron and K'tayan; she is afraid to run again. So she has simply withdrawn. She sleeps too much... but her dreams are haunted...

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