Chapter 11: My Mother's House

"Tell the rider I'll be there," I said through the door.

Greer's footsteps went away down the hall.

Rhys was still holding my hand.

"Today," I said, "I'm going home first."

The locks were off my mother's cottage by the time I crossed the ford.

A Stalbridge enforcer was standing by the gate with a crowbar and a bag of broken padlocks, and he didn't look at me as I went past.

He just set the iron key on the gatepost and left.

Rhys and Greer stayed at the gate.

I'd asked them to.

The cottage was small and gray-shingled, at the very edge of Stalbridge land, with the forest right up against the back wall.

My bees were wintering in their hives along the fence under burlap and snow.

I could hear them humming when I put my ear close.

They'd been fine without me for five days.

They were the only ones on this side of the river who'd never once laughed at me.

Inside, it was so cold my breath smoked.

Somebody had been through everything.

The drawers were pulled out.

My mother's sewing box was tipped over on the rug, spools everywhere.

The quilt was off my bed and the rug was pulled back from the floor of my bedroom, and the little iron door of the vault was standing open.

I knelt down and looked in.

There was the velvet box.

I picked it up and opened it, though I knew.

Empty.

A dent in the satin where the stone used to lie.

I sat on the floor of my bedroom with the empty box in my lap and the full stone on my chest, and for a while I didn't do anything at all.

Then I heard the gate.

Not Rhys's step.

Lighter, sharper, a heel on the frozen path.

I was on my feet when the door opened.

Rosamund Stalbridge stood on my threshold in a long gray coat, pulling off her gloves one finger at a time.

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