Josette informed them that her sister had sent her to Trianon for her own safety, which was absolute lunacy, in my opinion. Trianon was a target, not a safe haven. But Sabine and Marc were clearly both too distracted to question her claim, and I was more interested in what the spy who’d just landed in our midst intended to do than I was in outing her.

They left Joss alone with me.

I pretended to ignore her.

“Cécile sends her love,” she said, skirting around the growling dog. “She misses you.”

I highly doubted Cécile had sent along those sentiments, but my chest tightened nonetheless. She’d been worming her way into my thoughts for the past several hours. I’d told myself it was because she was relevant to my problem with the Winter Queen, but it was more than that. She was up to something, and whatever it was had her nerves stretched tight. I patted my pocket, thinking it might be time to take another dose.

“Is my sister all right?” Joss asked. “I’ve been worried about her since I left.”

I didn’t answer. This was Winter trying to ascertain how affective Cécile’s spell was; whether she could use her to lure me out. But the fact of the matter was that I knew Winter wouldn’t risk killing Cécile, so it was a failed gambit. And if the direness of Cécile’s situation came from another source, it wasn’t as though she couldn’t drag me out of the castle whether I willed it or not.

“Cécile got Gran to do a spell to make her forget your name.”

That caught my attention, although I didn’t let her know it. Was it the truth? Maybe. Cécile had been clear in her desire to unknow it, but I’d quietly refused to entertain that option. I’d wanted her to have the failsafe, because while it was one thing to curb my urge to go running to her whenever I believed she was in danger, it was quite another to ignore her call for my help. That, I’d never intended to do. No matter what the risk. But now there was no way for me to know the difference.

Unless Joss was lying.

“That’s fascinating, but I’m rather busy at the moment,” I said. “Perhaps you might find another place to linger.”

“I see,” she said, her face turning bright red. “I’ll leave you to it.”

Waiting until she was out of earshot, I turned to Souris. “Care to go for a walk?”