He nodded. “But she would call it a suicide, Tasha says. In such despair over what you had done to your father, you took your own life. Something like that. Tasha sees these things a lot better than you do, Phryne.”
She couldn’t argue the point. It would make sense that Isoeld would dispose of her as quickly as possible. Especially if she viewed Phryne as a rival for the Elven throne. It was probably only her stepmother’s desire to find the missing Elfstones that had kept her alive this long.
It was scary, but it was depressing, too. Things had not been good since her father married Isoeld, but she hadn’t realized how bad they had gotten. She hadn’t paid enough attention to what was happening. She had been too self-absorbed when she should have been thinking of her father and the possibility that Isoeld’s intentions were more dangerous than he knew. Isoeld wouldn’t have done this without having thought about it for a long time beforehand. An opportunity might have presented itself or desperation might have pushed her over the edge, but she had to have been planning this terrible thing long before that.
It made Phryne wonder anew about the fate of her grandmother and the Elfstones.
Isoeld would not have stopped with her father if she thought it would cement her hold on the throne.
“Has there really been no word at all about Mistral?” she asked Xac. “She’s just disappeared and no one’s seen or heard anything?”
“I told you what I saw when I went to her house. I don’t know anything else, Phryne.”
They walked in silence for a time, approaching the eastern borders of Arborlon now, drawing closer to her grandmother’s cottage. It was getting much darker as the lights of the city faded and the heavy woods loomed ahead, the pathway narrowing and twisting.
Phryne found herself growing more uneasy, listening for every noise, searching the shadows.
“Why are we doing this?” Xac whispered suddenly. “I don’t see what you think you’ll find.”
“I know. I don’t, either.” Phryne felt defeated. “I just have to go there and see for myself. I have to try to understand what happened.”
She didn’t say anything about the Elfstones. There wasn’t any reason to discuss that part of things with Xac Wen. Although their fate was at the back of her mind, she wasn’t sure what she would do even if she found them. Keep them from Isoeld, she guessed.
Keep them out of her hands.
“I just think this is a mistake,” Xac added unhelpfully.
She decided to change the subject. “How did you manage to get that note to me? How did you get into the kitchen long enough to hide it?”
“What note?” he said.
She stared at him. “The note you put in the hard roll that came with my dinner! The one that said HELP IS COMING.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t send you any note.”
She grabbed his arm and pulled him around to face her. “Wait a minute. Say that again.”
“I didn’t send you any note. Will you let go of my arm, Phryne? For cat’s sake!”
The chill that ran through her now was much worse than anything she had experienced in the cold air of the high passes leading out of the valley. She had been so sure that it was Xac, after he had set her free, that she hadn’t since considered the possibility that it might have been someone else.
And if it was someone else …
Quickly, she told the boy what had happened and how she had assumed the note must have been his. By the time she had finished, he was looking around wildly.
“It was her!” he hissed. “Isoeld! It must have been!”
“Probably,” she agreed. “It makes sense. It was just coincidence that you showed up when you did. If you hadn’t, I imagine I would have discovered the door was unlocked or something of that sort and been allowed to get free on my own, except that they would be waiting for me.”
“So they could kill you,” the boy finished. “They’d have an excuse.”
Or fol ow me to see if I would lead them to the Elfstones and then kil me. She thought that the more likely possibility but didn’t say so. She looked around at the darkness, half expecting someone to jump out of the shadows. But everything was quiet. Nothing moved.
“We have to forget this!” Xac Wen was saying. “We have to find somewhere to hide right now!”
Phryne put her hands on his shoulders, but gently this time and with no intention of trying to hold on to him. “Listen to me. I can’t do that. I have to go to my grandmother’s. I have to. There are reasons I can’t talk about just yet. But I have to go.
Isoeld doesn’t know I’ve escaped. Not yet. That guard might still be sleeping. You closed the door, so even after he wakes he might not realize I’m gone. Not right away.”
She paused, took her hands away. “I’m going. But you don’t have to. You know that.
You’ve done enough.”