There was no sign of her white stick anywhere, though there was a wardrobe standing in the corner beside the bed. Other than that, there wasn’t really anywhere else to hide the stick, unless you counted beneath the covers or Lady Brenner’s pillow. Perfidy hoped it didn’t come to that.

She made her way cautiously across the room, praying with each step that the floor didn’t offer another creak. Her prayers were answered, as her journey to the wardrobe was made in silence, the only sounds that of her own stifled breaths and Lady Brenner’s deep exhalations.

She opened the wardrobe.

Inside was an impressive collection of gowns, dresses, underclothes and other items of high fashion. It was impressive because they were stuck here in the middle of Lostwood, with nary a seamstress or dressmaker in sight. The sheer effort of getting all these clothes from wherever they came from to New Dawn would’ve been significant. There was even a rack for various sharp objects—pins and clips and combs—that might’ve been mistaken for instruments of torture if Perfidy hadn’t already spotted several of them in Lady Brenner’s hair.

And yet there was no white stick to be seen.

“Come on,” Perfidy muttered to herself quietly. It had to be here somewhere! Didn’t it?

She became more and more frantic as she riffled and rummaged through the hanging clothes, pushing the long trains of silky dresses aside as she searched. But the spaces between the garments were just that: spaces. Nothing filled those voids. She was just about to give up and assume it was an impossible task, Lady Brenner having grown wise over the months as each novice stole her magic stick, eventually deciding to sleep with it within her grasp beneath the bedclothes.

Almost as an afterthought, Perfidy shoved one final dress aside to reveal one corner of the wardrobe, a corner that was not entirely empty, a straight white stick propped up against the side, looking quite innocent as it stood there, as though it had been waiting to be found the entire time.

It was all Perfidy could do to hold herself back from snatching it and taking off, as she remembered that a stealthy exit would serve her better than a helter-skelter sprint to the door that would raise more of a ruckus than just a few creaking floorboards. Slowly, careful not to knock it over with a clatter, she closed her fingers around the stick.

Which, as it turned out, was not only not innocent, but also not interested in her plan of stealth.

Because it screamed. Loudly.