She had finished it in time for her sister Emma’s birth.
Now, only two days old, Emma lay atop that same quilt. Emma had lived her entire life wrapped in it. She was born weak and feverish, but their father forbade that a doctor be called. He decreed that Emma would live or die by God’s will alone.
Emma died.
As Erin could only watch, the pink flush faded from Emma’s tiny face and hands. Her skin grew paler than the ivory of the quilt underneath her. It was not supposed to happen that way. The wrongness of it struck Erin, told her that she could no longer accept her father’s words, her mother’s silences.
She would have to speak her heart, and she would have to leave.
Glancing over her shoulder to make sure that no one saw her, Erin pulled scissors from her dress pocket. The metal snicked together as she cut out one square from the corner of the precious quilt. She folded the square and hid it in her pocket, then wrapped her sister in her quilt for the last time, the missing corner tucked deep inside so that no one would ever know what she had done.
Her sister’s body was wrapped in the quilt when her father buried her tiny body.
Through the ice, Erin traced the green Irish-chain pattern, darkened with mold and age. Her fingertips slid across ice. She had never expected to see this quilt again.
Aghast, she realized what its presence here meant.
To obtain it, Rasputin must have despoiled her sister’s grave.
9:11 P.M.
Elizabeth ran through the maze, dragging Rhun along by the silver manacles. Nadia trailed, ever her dark shadow. Their human opponents could never match her group’s preternatural speed. Elizabeth should have no difficulty reaching the center of the maze well ahead of the blond doctor.
Though she cared little about the ambitions of the Sanguinists, she knew she must win this contest. If Cardinal Bernard ever decided that she was not the Woman of Learning, her life would be forfeit. Her fingers strayed again to the soft scarf that covered the wound on her throat. It was a shallow cut, a reminder of the depths of the order’s trust in her. If Bernard’s faith in her faltered, the next cut would be far deeper.
So she set a swift pace, memorizing every turn in the dark. She needed no light as she sped along. But with every step, her newly healed throat ached from the cold. Erin’s blood had partially revived her, but it was not enough, not nearly enough. It surprised her that the woman had offered such a boon—and even more so that Erin recognized the grievous nature of the Sanguinists’ assault on her.
The woman grew ever more intriguing to her. Elizabeth had even begun to comprehend Rhun’s fascination with her. Still, that would not stop Elizabeth from defeating the human in this task.
Elizabeth’s boots trod across the snow, her legs hurrying her forward. She ignored the distractions along the way, those rooms that had been sculpted to draw the eye and stir the imagination. Only one chamber had slowed her progress. It was a room that held a life-size carousel of horses made of ice. She remembered seeing such a display in Paris back in the summer of 1605, when such attractions had begun to replace the old jousting tourneys. She remembered the delight on her son Paul’s face upon seeing the bright costumes and prancing stallions.
An ache for her lost family, for her children long dead and grandchildren never seen, welled inside her.
Both sorrow and anger drove her onward.
Sweeping along, she peered through the many ice windows, each cunningly fashioned, but none provided clues as to which direction she should go. At a crossroads, she breathed in the smell of cold and snow, trying to judge the wind for a clue to the correct path.
Then from ahead came a faint rustling, hinting at unseen lurkers. No heartbeats accompanied the noises.
Strigoi.
She must be close to the heart of the maze.
Focusing on the sounds, she increased her pace again—then something caught the corner of her eye. Something frozen inside one of the ice windows, like a fly in amber. She stopped to study it, drawing Rhun to a halt, too.
Suspended in the middle of the ice was a rectangular object the size of her two hands put together. A shiny black cloth wrapped it snugly, tied with a dirty scarlet cord. She knew what it held.
It was her journal.
What is it doing here?
It was hard enough to imagine that the book had survived the ravages of centuries. It was even harder to fathom that someone had plucked it from its long-ago hiding place and brought it here.
Why?
The shiny cloth was oilskin. Her fingertips remembered its sticky surface, and her mind’s eye saw the first page as clearly as if she had drawn it yesterday.
It was a picture of an alder leaf, along with a diagram of its roots and stems.
Those early pages had contained drawings of herbs, listing their properties, the secrets to their uses, the places where they might be gathered on her estate. She had drawn the plants and flowers herself, written the instructions in her fairest hand by candlelight during the long winter hours. But she had not stopped there, remembering when her studies had turned darker, as dark as the heart Rhun had blackened.