An invisible hand patted her knee through the coverlet. “We like U. Not B sad, Godmuther fix.”
Privately she could not imagine how. If the Godmother had not been able to fix Sebastian’s werewolfery after all these years, how could she expect the Godmother to help her? But instead of saying so, and descending into inconsolable crying again, she made an effort to put a good face on things. No amount of crying was going to change what had already happened. All she could do was fight to fix it, or find ways to cope if the worst came. “I hope so,” she replied.
“Godmuther fix evrthing.”
If only that were true. She felt her eyes starting to burn again. No matter how hard she tried to make herself brave and practical — it didn’t stop the fear.
Or the loneliness; there was no one to help her face this.
“I like you all, too, Sapphire,” she said instead.
“You wont be wuf.” The words were written with such force that the chalk squeaked and shed powder.
She stared. That was…vehement. So emphatic that it came as something of a shock. “I hope you’re right,” she said tentatively.
“We wont let you be wuf.” The chalk actually broke in half.
She felt — not frozen, but suddenly stilled. There was something going on here, something that she couldn’t quite grasp. The invisibles must know something, something important, about this situation. Something that Sebastian clearly did not know.
“How do you know that?” she whispered.
There was a very, very long pause. Then, finally, the words were erased and a few shaky letters appeared.
“Cant tell.”
Now her mind unstuck, as it had in the carriage, when she had realized what must have happened to her. The invisibles did know something, and were being prevented from revealing it. The shakiness of the letters told her that, as if the hand that wrote them was fighting against a terrible compulsion merely to say that the writer could not say what was going on.
“But you can protect me, help me — ”
Again, frantic erasing and forceful strokes. “Yes.”
It was as if a terrible weight had been partly taken from her. She was not facing this entirely alone. For some reason…heaven only knew why…these creatures were befriending her. Even if she couldn’t see them, they wanted to help her.
And this one was assuring her that Godmother Elena, even more powerful than the King, was going to help her, too.
She sighed. “Then, I trust you, Sapphire. All of you. Thank you.”
“Dont cry.”
She managed a very shaky smile. “I’ll try not to. But I am homesick and I miss my father terribly.”
“Godmuther fix.”
Another comforting pat of her knee through the coverlet, and the slate and chalk and blue ribbon floated away, leaving her alone, with far more questions than answers, and far more puzzles than her mind would hold right now.
Well, there was no point in trying to sleep now.
She opened one of the books at random and began to read it. At first, she found herself reading and rereading the same page, but eventually she got the sense of it. It wasn’t the sort of thing she usually read; she liked history, not stories. But this seemed to be a more serious version of the silly romantic novels that the twins occasionally picked up, and she found herself following the story with some interest. It began, as these things tended to do, with a little orphaned girl begging in the streets, but rather than touching the heart of a crusty old miser, or being taken in by a poor but kindhearted couple with no children of their own, this little girl was taken up by a gang of young thieves.
Finally, she closed her eyes for just a little, because they were still sore and tired from crying, and when she opened them again it was morning.
6
SHE WOKE TO A WONDERFUL AROMA OF FLATCAKES and honey; when she opened her eyes, she found that the bed curtains and window curtains had been pulled back, letting light stream in, and a tray was evidently floating in midair beside her bed, accompanied by the green scarf.
“Good morning, Verte,” she said, rubbing her eyes, then sitting up. “I didn’t mean to sleep this long.”
The tray ended up on her lap without a mishap. The slate and chalk levitated up from the floor.
“Not late,” the chalk wrote.
She smirked. She felt so much better this morning, it was amazing. And maybe it was false hope, but while she had it she was going to enjoy it. “Not late by the standards of a Duke, perhaps. Late for those of us who intend to get work done.” Then she sobered. “He didn’t escape last night, did he?”
She thought she remembered howling, dimly, in her dreams. She couldn’t tell where it had been coming from, though. The howling she had heard before she slept had certainly come from inside the Manor.
Was it even possible that the wolf had learned to manipulate the door mechanism? That was a startling — and unsettling — thought.
“No. Sleeps.”
