12

“I have no idea,” I said, giving Cobie a significant look. “I don’t speak Deutsch, remember?”

“Let’s not mention it to the freinnen. Element of surprise and all.” Cobie grinned and climbed from underneath the covers.

I cast my gaze about the room, baffled. They hadn’t gone out the door; I’d heard one bolt falling open, not ten. Besides, they’d moved the wrong way, beyond the end of my bed. I stared in the direction they’d gone: there was nothing there besides the door to the privy and another wardrobe.

The privy was a few chamber pots, basins, and two bathtubs; it seemed an unlikely point of exit. But that wardrobe—none of the freinnen ever used it.

I drew near, and a humid draft swirled against my skin, warm and damp in the stale bedroom’s air. The doors were cracked open. And beyond were the beginnings of a corridor in the same gray stone as the rest of the castle.

The girls obsessed with clothing had sneaked out through a wardrobe. I gave a disbelieving laugh. “Their room has a secret passage.”

“That’s impossible,” Cobie said at my back. “The duke would never have given them this room. He would have known—”

“Not necessarily.” I opened the doors a bit wider. “This castle is old—Fritz said parts are in ruins. I’m sure there are things about it the hertsoh doesn’t know. Or the passage could have been blocked, but the girls cleared it. In a place with this many secrets . . .” I trailed off, my eyes meeting Cobie’s.

She shook her head slowly and withdrew to poke around the room, stopping to fiddle with a black gown on a dress form.

I sighed exaggeratedly. “Cobie, why does everything have to be black with you?”

“Black is easy,” she said absently. “Black doesn’t stain. And black always matches.”

“Matches what?”

“Other black things.”

“This.” I plucked up the pink satin dress Greta and Johanna had been debating and held it up to her. “This would be perfect on you.”

Cobie cringed. “Why pink?”

“Why not pink?” I exclaimed. “Wear what you want to wear, but surely you can afford to be impractical about color when the garment’s this impractical already.”

Cobie reached out to touch the dress, its smooth fabric filmy over her calloused fingers. “They were going to a party,” she said after a moment. “Their accent is different from what I grew up hearing. But I don’t think I got it wrong.”

I set the dress aside and leaned against the wall, thinking. “How could it possibly be worth it, sneaking out at night to go to a party? What would the tsarytsya do if she found out?”

Cobie shrugged. “I don’t think the tsarytsya pays much attention to what’s happening out here on the edge of the Imperiya.”

I wanted to believe that, but I feared it was wishful thinking. “What about their father? Wouldn’t he punish them?” Cobie gave a single, short laugh. “What?” I demanded.

She put down the makeup brush she’d been examining. “Selah, sometimes you make it easy to forget you’re eighteen and not a hundred and eight.”

I put my hands on my hips. “What does that mean?”

“You’ve never sneaked out of your house?” Cobie asked, arms outstretched. “Never gone out past bedtime to see friends or someone you had a crush on? Never done anything you weren’t supposed to do?”

I pursed my lips, thinking. “I forgot to tell Daddy one Easter I was going to the vigil at Saint Christopher’s. He nearly had the guard out for me, he was so worried.”

Cobie squinted at me. “No, I was wrong. You really are a century old.”

I swallowed hard, staring at my pajama pants. “Well.” I hesitated. “There was England.”

She stilled and sat on her bed, across from me. “England,” she sighed. “Feels like a lifetime ago.”

“It does,” I agreed. “I’ve kissed a lot of boys in the last month, Cobie.”

“Two isn’t a lot,” she countered. “Two is a perfectly reasonable number of people to kiss when you’re essentially on an expedition to find your lifetime kissing partner.”

“Well, when you put it that way.” Slowly, as if against my will, I walked back to the wardrobe door. Cobie came to my side, and we exchanged a silent glance and crept into the hallway.

The stone corridor was damp and echoing, lined with flickering lamps like those in the rest of the castle. But this one sloped downhill.

I watched for guards, for one of the freinnen left to stand sentry. For any sign as to where the hallway might lead. But there was nothing.

We hadn’t been walking long, though, when we came to another door. I slipped through it, heart beating fast.

It was lucky for me that Cobie had quick reflexes. The dock was so narrow, I nearly fell right into the water.

“Holy—” She broke off, still gripping the back of my shirt.

The ceiling of the little underground canal dripped stalactites and cold water, ringing with the echo of her voice. Just ahead, the waterway opened up into the night outside.

“Where on earth does this go?” I breathed.

Cobie peered out across the water. “We’ll have to swim for it if we want to find out.”

“I don’t know how, remember?” Torden had held me when we swam in Norge. My chest grew tight at the memory.

Cobie made a face, then dropped to her stomach, staring down into the water. Then she jumped up, brushed off her pants, and nodded. “I can see the bottom. It’s shallow, and there’s barely any current. Besides, it’s time you learned to swim,” she added rationally, tugging off her boots. “We’re traveling by ship.”

“I suppose.” But I was still backed against the door, my arms crossed over my chest.

Cobie laughed, her arms and shoulders going loose. “Come on, Selah,” she urged. “Live a little.”

I thought of why I’d come to Shvartsval’d—of those I’d hoped to help. I thought of Lang, sitting next to Margarethe at breakfast, and again at lunch and dinner, apparently in no hurry to share his plans with me.

I thought of Torden, of kissing him in the water. Of what he’d said to me the night I left Asgard.

Be free, elskede.

“Let’s do it,” I said. Cobie’s whoop echoed off the cavern walls.

“Stop thrashing around.” Cobie drew back from my splashes, squinting. “Steady strokes.”

I felt like a child as she braced my torso while I kicked and paddled, but it wasn’t as if I had any pride anymore, anyway. “Maybe we can hang them over chairbacks,” I said. We were trying to decide where we’d dry our wet clothes later.

“We’re supposed to have been asleep,” Cobie argued. “We have to put them somewhere the freinnen won’t notice.”

I worked my arms, turning my head side to side experimentally. “Good point.”

“If there are frames underneath our beds, we can hang them there,” she mused.

What was under our beds? I tried to envision what I’d seen as I crouched beside my trunks.

It was only when I was four or five feet away from Cobie that I noticed I had swum out of her arms on my own.

“You let me go!” I blurted, turning back to her, accusatory.

“But you’re swimming!”

“Oh. I am!” I realized abruptly, my arms still paddling at the water. “I did it!”

Cobie laughed and swam toward me, planting her hands on my shoulders. “You’re muscular, Selah. You’re strong.” Her hazel eyes were keen and kind, and in that moment, I was glad to have her with me. “Honestly, you didn’t need Torden holding you up all those times in Norge.”

Torden. My eyes burned. “It wasn’t as though I minded,” I said, managing a laugh.

“Still,” Cobie insisted. “This is just to say: You can float on your own.”

I missed Torden like I’d miss a limb or a lung. But what she said was true.

“Shall we?” Cobie nodded questioningly at the mouth in the castle wall—where the little canal flowed toward the outside world. I nodded and swam after her.

The stream beyond drifted downhill and through the woods. The night air was crisp, more like fall than summer, and goose bumps skated across my skin. But the stars were bright and clear overhead, and the woods were alive with the songs of nightingales and the hoots of owls.

I felt hidden from the tsarytsya, here in the woods. Beyond the notice of the hertsoh and anyone else who might wish to harm me.

“We should go back before you tire out.” Cobie glanced up through the trees. “It’s getting late.”

I still wanted to follow the girls. But I nodded, knowing these few gulps of fresh night air would sustain me through the day to come. I swam back toward Katz Castle after Cobie.

We hid our wet things under our beds and crawled beneath our covers. And I wondered until I fell asleep what lay at the far end of the river.