The Unfailing Light (The Katerina Trilogy 2)

by Robin Bridges

  “I am not here to hurt you,” I whispered, trying to remain calm. “I only want to help you. But I will need to know your name to do that.”

  I heard a low hiss behind me as several books flew off the shelves toward me. I threw up my arms to shield myself—a few of the books were heavy. “Mon Dieu!” I screamed.

  The gloom and malice all came flooding back to me, and I started to regret throwing away Sucre’s muffins. I could feel the ghost trying to hurt me. My chest tightened, making it difficult to breathe. Why was she so full of hatred? And why did she haunt the library?

  Goethe’s Faust was one of the books that had fallen from the shelves. I grabbed it quickly and retreated to my room, leaving the other books open on the floor. The ghost could clean up her own mess. The dark feelings had passed as soon as I crossed the threshold into the hallway, and by the time I returned to my room and sat down on my cot, I could breathe easily again. I pushed up my sleeves to look at the bruises on my arms from the books hitting me. At least they would be hidden under my long sleeves, so Madame Tomilov and Sister Anna would not see. Hopefully, Elena and Aurora would not see them either.

  I was already changed into my long-sleeved nightgown and tucked under my covers, reading Faust, when the girls returned to our room sometime later that night.

  They were giggling and out of breath. “Katiya, why did you leave the dining hall? You missed all the fun!” Elena gushed.

  Aurora flopped back on her cot. “We wanted to dance all night, but Madame would not let us!”

  Elena shook her head. “I think Madame would have let us, if Sister Anna had not reminded her we needed to go to sleep.”

  “Are all of you ready for our German exam tomorrow?” I asked. “Madame Orbellani sagte dass es schwierig sein würde.”

  Aurora rolled her eyes. “Of course I’m ready. I don’t care how difficult Madame Orbellani believes she’s made it. I grew up with a German nanny.”

  “And I grew up in Germany,” Alix said.

  “I plan to copy off of Alix,” Aurora said.

  “And I plan to copy off of Aurora,” Elena said, still twirling around the room.

  Aurora laughed as she got ready for bed. “Then I shall mark every answer wrong on purpose.”

  Elena stuck her tongue out at Aurora playfully.

  Alix smiled at them, looking more animated than she had in months.

  I was glad the three of them had warmed up to each other, even if it was only because of some enchanted pastries. Still, I couldn’t help feeling a little bit left out. Which was ridiculous. Elena and I weren’t really friends. She’d tried to poison me, and had cast a charm on me. We could never have a true friendship, like the kind Dariya and I shared. I would never be able to trust any of the Montenegrins. And pastry or no pastry, I wasn’t sure I trusted Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt either.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  On the first sunny day, Madame Tomilov allowed Sister Anna to take our class out for a walk in the courtyard. The sister had argued that we needed fresh air and exercise to keep us strong and healthy during the winter months, and the headmistress had agreed. She sent along a picnic basket full of Sucre’s apple and cinnamon muffins.

  Elena seemed to be acting more like her normal wicked and conniving self, however. She grabbed my arm and we hung back behind the others, allowing Aurora and the rest of the girls to hurry ahead.

  “What is it?” I whispered. “They’ll never let us out again if you do something horrible.”

  “I just wanted to speak with you, Katerina Alexandrovna. Without Alix listening. I found something mysterious under her bed last night.”

  “What were you up to?”

  Elena shrugged. “I needed to put something there. I did not expect to see witchcraft already in place.”

  “Witchcraft?”

  “The box she keeps tucked under her bed. It has a red ribbon coiled up inside.”

  “And what makes you think that it is witchcraft? You had no right to search the princess’s things, Elena.”

  “There was a protective symbol scratched inside the box’s lid. A German hex symbol.”

  “How do you know?” But I already could guess. I shook my head. “Never mind. Your sisters.”

  Elena smiled. “They are extremely well educated, Katerina. Not only did they finish at the tops of their classes here at Smolny, they also were tutored during the summers at home in Greek and Persian. We have quite a large occult library at home in Cetinje.”

  Briefly, I regretted missing out on this library when I was in Montenegro last spring. “Perhaps it is something a superstitious servant gave her.”

  “Anyway, I wonder what the ribbon is for.”

  I looked at Elena. “And I wonder what you were planning on putting under her bed.”

  Elena took my arm in hers as she looked up at the sky and smiled. “Oh, just a little something to keep her from looking her best.”

  I shook my head again and sighed. I realized nothing magical would work under the empress’s spell, so Alix was safe for the moment from Elena’s creepy trinkets. But whatever magic was in that box would not be able to work either. What was the German princess hiding?

  I wished that Alix and I had become closer friends during the school year, but she kept mostly to herself. She definitely had her own strange secrets.

  “What is that?” Elena asked, stopping just before we reached the archway leading to the outer courtyard. In the snow, under a barren hedge, there was a pile of dark cloth. Just beyond the empress’s enchanted barrier.

  Aurora and the Bavarian princesses were walking back to join us. They spotted the cloth at the same time. Aurora reached out and picked it up, shaking the snow off.

  Her hands passed easily through the empress’s wards. It was good to know I had one roommate with no supernatural abilities.

  “It looks like a woman’s shawl,” I said. “Someone must be very cold.”

  Aurora held it up. The black wool was fringed and dotted with tiny pearls. “It’s beautiful. I’m keeping it.”

  “It’s dirty,” I said. “Not only has it been lying here in the snow, it also looks valuable. Someone will be looking for it.”

  Aurora wrapped herself up in it and spun around. “Ugh, it smells horrible!” She unwrapped it and threw it toward me, but it fell to the ground.

  I sighed and picked it back up, folding it carefully. “We should give it to Sister Anna. Maybe she can clean it up and find its owner.”

  The shawl did have a peculiar smell to it. An earthy smell of decay. My heart pounded in my ears and I felt dizzy. It smelled of a tomb.

  “Katerina?” Elena was staring at me.

  I took a deep breath. There was a logical explanation. I was certainly mistaken. The shawl had probably been lying under that shrub all winter. It probably just smelled because it had been outside in the damp for so long, not because a dead person had been wearing it.

  “Katerina Alexandrovna! What is wrong with you? You look pale as a ghost!”

  I looked at Elena and tried to shrug nonchalantly. “I just felt a chill all of a sudden. Let’s hurry and catch up with the others.”

  “Should we take the shawl or not?” Elena looked doubtful.

  I sighed and hesitated. “It would be the right thing to do.”

  “Well, come on, then. I’m starting to lose feeling in my hands out here.”

  “Perhaps the cook will make hot cocoa for us when we return,” Augusta said hopefully.

  Elena grinned. “He’s very handsome, for a cook, is he not? Aurora says he can’t be more than twenty, but I think he’s much older.”

  I held my tongue. It was the glamour that made him appear so young. He looked to me like a man in his late thirties or early forties, but as a member of the fae, he could have been over a hundred years old. “Leave him alone, Elena.” I started walking, leaving her behind.

  Her laughter followed me as I hurried to catch up with the others, the shawl bundled up in my arms.

>   Sister Anna, who had not even noticed our absence, took the shawl disdainfully. “One would certainly hope the woman who lost her shawl was not in the habit of losing her clothing in the woods frequently.”

  Elena giggled and whispered to me, “Perhaps we should tell her we found a pair of drawers in the woods as well.”

  I rolled my eyes but grinned. Poor Sister Anna.

  Alix sat in the dining hall by herself that evening, apparently deep in thought. I worried about her, even without Elena being able to cast any charms on her. I left Elena chatting with Erzsebet and approached Alix.

  She looked up but said nothing.

  “Were the winters at Hesse-Darmstadt as cold as the winters here in St. Petersburg?”

  She shrugged and looked intently into her cup of cocoa.

  “I guess it is difficult to adjust to living away from home for the first time. Do you hear often from your family?”

  Alix finally looked up at me. “What do you want, Katerina Alexandrovna? I’d like to be left in peace.”

  “Why must you be so mysterious?” I asked, growing impatient with her. “You know about the ghost. Don’t you wish to help get rid of her? And protect the students?”

  “She is not harming anyone,” the princess said stubbornly.

  “But she has before, and I’m certain it won’t be long before someone else gets hurt. Please help me, Alix. You know something that you’re not telling me.”

  “Why? Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  She didn’t cry, but looked as if she might. Without another word, she stood up and left.

  Disappointed and just a little bit puzzled, I rejoined Elena and Erzsebet. I had learned nothing about Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt. She was almost as much of a mystery as the Smolny ghost.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  It was the height of the St. Petersburg winter season, and most of the girls bemoaned the balls and ballets we were missing. Pepita’s staging of the ballet The Sleeping Beauty had debuted at the Mariinsky Theater. It was said even the tsar liked it, although his comments were not effusive enough to please its composer, Tchaikovsky. There was a much-talked-about ball, given by Grand Duchess Ella, where everyone wore emeralds. Elena sulked and obsessed over whom the tsarevitch had danced with. Alix sulked too, in her own dark corner of our room.

  It was also the full moon, and I contemplated how much of an effect on my roommates that had.

  I sat on my cot and sulked myself, wondering what George Alexandrovich was up to in Paris. I wondered exactly what dark magic he was learning.

  “The Black Lily has great plans for him.”

  I sighed and rubbed my temples. Danilo, do not tease me if you are not going to tell me everything you know.

  His laugh filled my head. “They are waiting for an auspicious time to hold their great ritual. And then George will be initiated into their Inner Circle.”

  Their Inner Circle? Are they organized in a similar fashion as the Order of St. John?

  “Very similar. As are most occult orders these days.”

  Danilo, you wouldn’t know who the current Koldun is for the Order of St. John, would you?

  He laughed again. “Your precious George would not tell you?”

  I was a little mad at myself for not thinking to ask George when I saw him.

  “I do not know who the Koldun is, Duchess. That is one of their most closely guarded secrets.”

  I sighed. The crown prince was no help at all. It did concern me, though, that he knew George would one day become the next Koldun, and what would Danilo do with that information? What could he do?

  Alix and Elena were both deeply absorbed in either their own thoughts or their geography books. I couldn’t tell which. I didn’t dare disturb them to say I was going to the library.

  “Watch out for the ghost, Duchess.” Danilo was still listening to my thoughts.

  Thank you kindly for your concern, but I must learn who she is.

  “Why? There is nothing you can do about the ghost while you are safe behind the empress’s spell.”

  There has to be something, Your Highness. I can’t let her hurt anyone else.

  There was no answer, which surprised me. Only silence in my head. Where had the crown prince gone?

  It was nice having my thoughts to myself again as I hurried to the library. It seemed as if Danilo had been in my head more and more often over the past few weeks. I was getting tired of his interruptions at the most inopportune times.

  A frightened girl from the Blue Form came running out of the library. “There’s something horrible in there!” she cried, grabbing my arms. I hugged her to me, trying to calm her down.

  “What did you see?”

  “Nothing, but something is still in there! I’m not crazy! I heard it laugh!”

  I pulled away from her to look at her closely. “Did anything hurt you?”

  She shook her head. “Please don’t tell the headmistress! I don’t want her to think I’m crazy!”

  “You are not crazy. Run down to the kitchen and see if the cook has something warm and sweet for you to munch on.”

  “Do you think he’d let me?”

  “Tell him that Katerina Alexandrovna sent you,” I said, smiling kindly.

  She started downstairs, but turned back. “You’re not going in there, are you?”

  “Just to get a book. I’ll be right back out.”

  She shuddered and hurried down the stairs toward the kitchen. I hoped Sucre would be helpful and make her feel better.

  The library was freezing. The ghost was there. I took a step into the room. “I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to find out who you are. Were you a student at Smolny?”

  The bookcase began to shake. I took a tiny step back, closer to the door, and the shaking stopped. Was I making her nervous?

  “I wish there was a way we could communicate,” I said. “You could tell me what your name is, and how old you were when you—”

  A heavy force came out of nowhere and knocked me on the side of the head. I fell to the floor in a daze.

  The room began to spin slightly.

  “Katerina? What have you done now, my beloved?” Danilo’s voice was sarcastic.

  I felt like someone was kicking me in the ribs. I curled up on the floor, holding very still, and trying very hard not to cry out. I’d never felt pain like this before. I had to get out of the room. Trying to reason with a ghost was one of the stupidest things I’d ever done.

  Over and over, the cold force slammed into me, knocking the wind out of me. An angry young girl’s voice hissed around my head. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I tried to crawl back out of the library. There was a dull roar in my ears, like a winter storm had kicked up inside the tiny room.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about it.” Books began to tumble off the shelves.

  She was throwing a temper tantrum.

  “It’s all right,” I groaned, holding my side. “You don’t have to talk about it.” I pushed myself up carefully and stepped back out of the room. I could not take in a very deep breath without pain. I knew it had been foolish of me to try to deal with the ghost alone, but now I was furious. From the hallway I whispered to her, “Once I find out who you are, I’ll find the means to send you away. I will not let you hurt anyone here anymore.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  I went to the kitchen to see if the Blue Form girl was feeling better. The kitchen staff was busy scrubbing pots and pans. I found Sucre at the kitchen table studying an almanac.

  “Bonsoir, Monsieur Sucre.”

  “But it is not possible,” Sucre muttered to himself. He looked up and saw me. “Ah, it is the Dark Duchess,” he said, sighing. “Comment allez-vous, Mademoiselle?”

  “I am well, Monsieur Sucre. What are you studying?”

  He frowned and pushed the almanac away. “It is nothing. What brings you to the kitchen? Are you w
anting something to eat?”

  “No, Monsieur. I wanted to see if a young girl had come to see you. She was badly frightened by the ghost.”

  Sucre’s mutterings were in a dialect I could not understand. His eyes seemed to glow a brighter blue than before. “Why doesn’t the headmistress lock up that damned room? You children have no business disturbing that … that thing that lives in there.”

  “But she doesn’t just stay in the library. She’s been in my room. And here in the kitchen too.”

  Sucre looked as if he were about to say something, but was cut short by a loud shriek from the back of the pantry. His face grew dark as he rose from the table to investigate.

  I caught a glimpse of the piece of paper tucked into the almanac he’d been reading. The handwriting was barely legible: Wolf’s Heart. The almanac was turned to March, with the eighth day circled. I shuddered, not knowing if it was a recipe or some faerie ritual.

  I followed Sucre to the pantry and peeked through the crowd, wondering if the ghost had scared someone again.

  Two women sank to the floor, crying and crossing themselves.

  Next to them, the kitchen girl, the one who’d been injured by the ghost the night of the Smolny Ball, lay dead.

  Sucre quickly shooed everyone out of the pantry and closed the door. I could see his glamour straining to seal the door shut, as he worked his faerie magic on the kitchen staff. He pulled a loaf of brown bread out of the oven, the steam rising from its warm surface.

  The scent was heavenly, but it could not make me forget what I saw. A cold, pale body. The girl’s black eyes glassy and vacant like a doll’s.

  The others, however, were easily fooled. I watched them dig into the bread hungrily. They were soon smiling and whistling as they returned to work.

  I glared at the cook. “What are you going to do about her?”

  “I will move her when the others leave.”

  “What happened exactly? Can a ghost actually kill someone? Now will you try to get rid of her?”

  “You would be wise to tell no one what you’ve seen here, Duchess.” Sucre smiled a little, baring his tiny, sharp, pointy teeth. Sucre was too tall, too slender to be completely human. I wondered why no one else had ever noticed this. Even hidden behind a large flour- and sugar-dusted apron. His raven-black hair was long and pulled back in a queue like some wild Romantic poet’s.