There was always something distinctly attractive about this Karandi woman—in her silken veils, in the golden complexion of her skin, in the tiny folds at the corners of her hazel eyes, in the rounded cheeks ruddied by a different sun. She carried herself with a premeditated grace and elegance in every step, as if she were a queen walking among her loving subjects. Perpetually cold and uncomfortable in the climate of the north, she was a foreign element thrust into the war's scarred scenery, akin to a flower floating in the eddies of a mountain stream—fleeting, of unknown origin, and constantly under threat to be swallowed by the depths and never seen again.

Despite her perhaps deliberately mysterious mien, she was quick to burst into laughter, conjuring memories of a different world not thrown into senseless war. That gentleness, almost a stubborn sort of hopefulness, yet concealed a cool disgust at the horrors she encountered in the day-to-day. Even though she was a courtesan, she maintained a polite privacy regarding her thoughts and opinions that only unfurled a little when the survivors of the Forty-Second Special Battalion became trapped in the Silvermans' cabin.

Unfortunately, beautiful things and people rarely survive war unscathed. River met her end in that same cabin, murdered by the callous Lieutenant di Culo for no better reason than to make a point to Cameron and others. It was a senseless death, one of many that weighs heavily and makes a soldier wonder how things could have gone differently.

She was buried on the mountainside by the cabin, along with its previous owners and the remains of her killer.