14

The freinnen found me a restless sleeper after I’d taken my tea that evening.

When the wardrobe door shut behind them, I sat up, flinging myself back against the headboard and breathing sharply out of my nose.

“Bee in your bonnet?” Cobie asked mildly.

I leveled a stare at her. “Why do you ask that?”

“You seem agitated.” She crossed her arms. “Lang gets under your skin. And I know things didn’t go well with Fritz today.”

“No, he doesn’t,” I sputtered. “Lang, I mean.”

“No, you’re right. You’re entirely unaffected,” Cobie agreed.

I stood and began to pace, surveying the freinnen’s room. “And no, things with Fritz didn’t. But they will,” I added. Cobie made another wry assent.

I ran my hand over the edge of Margarethe’s vanity, piled in jewels and makeup and clothes, flanked by fashion plates. It was all so beautiful, and it irritated me.

I’d left Lang and Perrault’s quarters earlier that evening feeling frustrated. But my anger had mounted the more I dwelled on Lang wasting time with Margarethe and pursuing leads in town with no apparent urgency while I had to pretend to be stupid, pretend to sleep, pretend not to care that the freinnen were lying and Lang was using me.

Perhaps I’d agreed to this. But I was tired of licking my wounds in the shadow of the rotting house above me, sick of being left behind while Lang kept his own counsel and made his own rules.

Torden had talked to me. Had trusted me. He would never have excluded me like this.

Lang thought I was only good enough to provide cover for his operation—to be a set piece in the larger drama of his tactics.

I might not have my radio. I might not speak the language. But I was going to show him I was more than a curtain for him to pull while he executed his schemes.

I wasn’t sure yet how to convince Fritz to lend me the help I needed. But wherever the freinnen were going, it was a secret, and secrets tended to travel in packs. I might find Hansel and Gretel if we followed the girls. We might even find the Waldleute. We could help them. We could go home and take care of my father.

And if we were careful, the tsarytsya and the hertsoh would never be the wiser.

I rounded on Cobie. “Let’s follow them. Let’s find out where they’re going and who they’re meeting out there.”

She got up, grinning, and sheathed a knife at her hip. “I thought you’d never ask.”

This time, when we reached the dock, I didn’t pause before I dove into the water.

We hadn’t swum far before we spotted the freinnen in their boats. There were five of them, two girls to each vessel. Even at a distance, I could make out their beautiful gowns, their glimmering jewels.

The sisters were quiet, for once, as the boats bobbed downstream in a little parade. We kept well back from them, letting the current carry us, taking care not to splash. My heart stampeded in my chest, nerves running high.

But I was breathing clear air and staring up at a night sky full of stars, alive, alive, even as my lungs began to ache and my shoulders burned.

They rowed down the little canal that led from the castle straight to the Reyn. Cobie watched the current uncertainly, then reached for my hand.

“You said I didn’t need help.”

Cobie seized my fingers and began to tow me across the broad river. “Everybody needs help sometimes,” she said over her shoulder. “We stick together.”

“We stick together,” I agreed.

I clung to Cobie’s hand as we crossed the Reyn, as its waters beat against my side. When we reached the far bank, we clambered up among the mud and the rocks and the weeds, panting and waiting.

Before long, the freinnen were tying up their boats at another little dock, and we followed them up the hill, into the forest. I wrapped my arms around myself against the night air and kept close to Cobie, trying to be as quiet as the owls and bats swooping overhead. Moonlight silvered a stand of birches alongside the path.

“Selah,” Cobie whispered. “Do you see that?”

Candles clung to the branches of a massive alder, gleaming golden in the dark ahead, so like Arbor Hall I couldn’t help but think it was an omen. The sounds of laughter and music were coming from just beyond the candle tree, from a ruined castle hidden in the wood.

Many of its walls were crumbling, half its roof was collapsed, and green lichen spotted its old gray stone; but its every window glimmered with candle flame, and the stars were diamond-bright overhead. And more than all that—the music.

Tears built in my throat. Cobie’s brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” My voice cracked.

I was overreacting. But the music pouring out of the ruins was the first I’d heard in days.

I’d taken it for granted, before—had hardly noticed Andersen humming as he folded his paper figurines or Will singing to himself in the galley. The music at the balls I’d attended in Asgard and England had been background noise to other pursuits.

But after days and nights of decay and silence, the music and the sparkling hidden castle in the woods had undone me. I swallowed hard and smiled at Cobie.

A path led clearly from the candle tree to the castle door, but we clambered up through the woods to a window instead. Cobie blew out the candle on its ledge, as if to show what she thought of our not being properly invited.

Then we leaned over the window ledge and peered inside.