Outside the Rennington manor, with the sun just mentioning that it was preparing to rise, I looked up at the great height from the ground to my open window. I would have to be careful to keep the papers securely with me as I made the climb, if ever I could figure how the climb could be made.

“It is a great ways up, is it not, Cousin?”

I turned to see Isther, her nightgown silken and flowing about her, not a bead of perspiration on her flawless skin, though mine was drenched from my walking through the dense forest.

“However did you manage to get out of your little prison, Aurelie Kendrick?” She adjusted her nightgown, flipping her long blonde braid over her shoulder. “It matters not, I suppose. You will be put to simple work tomorrow. The work of a Femme. Embroidery. Reading and reciting. Piano and singing. For your husband is growing impatient. And I warn you, Cousin, that you will not resist my efforts, for I have much at stake. You will not cause me to fail, or it will be the very end of you. Now, get some rest. Or I will be forced to tell my father that you have directly defied him.”

Isther locked arms with me so she could escort me up to my room. I worried that she might find the papers beneath my other arm to be suspicious, but if she noticed them, she said nothing about their strangeness. “Your new governess arrives tomorrow. Do not mistake that I have arranged for the most severe of women to tame you. You will not succeed in maintaining your wildness, Femme Kendrick. Not if I am to succeed in my endeavors. Good night.”

And Isther slammed the door behind her.

It was then I noticed a ruffle behind my curtains. I realized that if a monster of some sort lurked in my chambers, I had no weapon handy with which to defend myself. Briefly, I wondered whether Alexander would come to me if I needed him. But he had not before, when the emittunt nearly dissolved my bones. Nor when Milieu drove his fangs into my chest. Nor when I lay helpless at the feet of Braun Edgar Cranley. My dungeon pyre was no Vincent, that was certain.

Alexander was something else entirely.

With one motion, I removed the curtain, prepared to kick the thing or to dash away if necessary. But alas, there was only a young human boy, his hands curled in fists and his nose covered in filth.

I relaxed my stance, for at once I knew it to be the same boy who struck Royce Rennington on the head when he was determined to pulverize his brother, Niall’s sweet face. The boy with the brown cap who’d disappeared so swiftly into the woods. But what was he doing in my room so late at night?