She wondered, though, who that someone might be.

When the young women were finished, they picked up the cloths and basins and disappeared out the door. Not one word had been exchanged.

Phryne went back to thinking about Isoeld’s offer. Was there some way that Phryne could turn it to her advantage? Maybe she should pretend to accept, wait until she got clear of this room, and then make a run for it. But she knew it wouldn’t work like that. Whatever sort of confession they extracted, they would put it on paper and have her sign it before they let her take a single step outside her prison. Besides, she knew she couldn’t make herself confess to killing her father; the very thought of such a thing was revolting.

Still, why had Isoeld threatened her with compromising her grandmother’s safety? What was it that she hoped to gain?

She thought back over the words her stepmother had spoken, trying to remember them exactly, hoping for a clue. But nothing revealed itself, nothing seemed out of place. It all fit together nicely.

Except…

At the very end, she remembered suddenly. When Teonette was beating her to within an inch of her life, when everything was so crazy for those few seconds, what was it Isoeld had said?

If you kill her, we’ll never find them.

Them.

Phryne’s triumphant smile would have been broader if it hadn’t hurt her face so much to stretch her mouth. Them. Isoeld had to be talking about the blue Elfstones! Nothing else made any sense. She would have known about them, of course—a valuable talisman, a legacy from the time of Kirisin Belloruus. How she had found out they were in the hands of Mistral, Phryne couldn’t imagine. But once her father was out of the way, her stepmother would have gone searching for them first thing.

Apparently, she hadn’t found them. But she seemed to know that they were destined for Phryne and might now believe that they were in her possession. Hidden, perhaps, but waiting to be found. Isoeld would be intent on finding and gaining possession of them so that her hold on the throne was more than mere words; it was backed by the power of Elven magic.

All this reasoning was something of a leap of faith, a broad extrapolation of a conclusion drawn from a raft of possibilities. Yet Phryne could feel in her heart that she was right.

But what was she going to do about it? She had to get out of this room before she could do anything, and just at the moment that didn’t seem like a very strong possibility. Or even a weak one, for that matter. Not unless someone outside the room chose to help her.

If she could just find a way to get word to her cousins!