She was considering various impossible ways to do that when dinner arrived. The storeroom door opened and the little serving girl entered with her tray, setting it down carefully just over the threshold before she backed out again and the door closed anew. Phryne stared at the tray and the food for several minutes, trying to decide if she was hungry. She wasn’t, but she knew she had to eat.

She climbed to her feet gingerly and crossed the room to the tray. She sat down again, too weary even from that little effort to try to take the tray back across the room. She would eat on the floor and then maybe sleep. It had been long enough now that she no longer felt concussions were a worry.

The tray contained a hard roll, some cold meat and cheese, and a cup of water. Reasonable, if not very exciting.

She began to eat.

She had just finished pulling the hard roll apart and was about to take a bite of one section when she saw the folded slip of paper that was lodged inside.

Something was written on the paper—three words in large block letters.

HELP IS COMING

Chapter Ten

WHO HAD SENT THE NOTE?

It had been hours since she had split open that hard roll and found the slip of paper hidden inside, and she couldn’t stop thinking about it. There were a limited number of possibilities that made sense, and she had gone over every one dozens of times. But none of them felt quite right.

The Orullian brothers, Tasha and Tenerife, were her first choice. Her cousins and friends, they would be the ones best able and most likely to try to help her. But they were stationed at Aphalion Pass as part of an Elven Hunter contingent charged with keeping the Drouj army from entering the valley. They had been up there for weeks, and while they must know by now what had happened to her there was no way they could return to Arborlon without permission. Because Isoeld knew of their close relationship, permission was likely to be a long time coming. They were the first ones she would think of when it came to making a list of friends and relatives who needed to be kept far away. So unless they had abandoned their post—something they were unlikely to do, in Phryne’s estimation—they weren’t the ones who had sent her the note.

Besides, even if they had come back into the city without permission, their absence in all likelihood would have been discovered by now and they were already being hunted. How much good could they do her in that case? How much, when they were at risk, too?