Chapter 3
Sophie’s eyes flew open. She was drenched in cold sweat. A bad dream, it had all been a bad dream. Except she soon realized she was lying in a rather sturdy, comfortable bed, burrowed under a mound of covers. The room she’d been working in before putting on the cursed gown had a rickety old bed frame and no bedding whatsoever. She blinked a few times to find it was near dusk. Her eyesight had returned.
“I probably just passed out,” she said, somewhat disgusted with herself. No one was around and before she could sink into self-pity at being abandoned, she heaved herself off the bed.
Her stomach rumbled with hunger again. Despite gnawing nerves—she had traveled hundreds of years into the past due to a cursed gown, after all—she was determined to make the best of things. When she figured out how to get back to her own time, what a story she’d have to tell! Or at least she’d be able to write papers on this with authority. She didn’t really think anyone would believe she’d actually been here.
Fay Driscoll had failed to break the curse, but now there were two of them. Two heads were bound to be better than one. Sophie made her way downstairs, determined to get some food and find Fay. She’d get briefed on the situation and they could go from there.
As she made her way to the great hall, she felt overwhelmed with the stuffy air. The castle she was used to always had a nice breeze to keep the air fresh, due to all the holes in the walls and floors. This castle was as tight as a drum. Taking a tentative deep breath, she was surprised to find the air didn’t smell bad at all. Not a hint of dog or body odor or urine, as she would have expected. Though it was a bit close for what she was used to, it smelled like herbs, hay, and an undertone of wood smoke. It was crisp but not desperately cold inside. She wished she’d brought a cloak from the wardrobe now that she meant to duck outside for a quick breath before joining her new family in the great hall.
As she swung open the huge door that she knew led to the main hall, she admired the sturdy newness of it. Taking note of the medieval hinges, she wished she had her phone to take pictures. Randolph and the researchers would go nuts to see these things. She strode confidently toward the great hall doors, admiring the candle and torch lighting system and the fine tapestries on the walls. She tried not to gawk as a couple serving boys scuttled past her.
“Lady Sophie,” they both said, bobbing their heads respectfully.
Her confidence grew when they knew who she was. Or who she was supposed to be in this little cursed game. She could breeze around wherever she wanted to go. In her own time, there were places in the castle that were too dangerous for anyone to get to just yet, and now she’d be able to explore them at will. She imagined the architects who’d been arguing over how Grancourt would have looked in its heyday would be peeing themselves with excitement right about now.
Her confidence was blown when she finally entered the great hall. It was nothing like what she’d imagined. No one had thought there would be a massive fireplace at one end. The end she’d meant to sneak through to get her much needed breath of fresh air, actually. She looked around wildly for an alternate exit and realized she’d have to pass a whole load of people to get to it.
Abort mission! her mind screamed. Get back to safety.
With a glance around, she located a long plank table on a raised dais. That was where the family would sit—where she should have a place if the curse was keeping up—but no one was there at the moment. They’d all finished their meal, probably had some entertainment since there were guests, and were now… where? Once again, she felt abandoned. Fay should have kept tabs on her, so newly sucked into this. She realized with a slight gasp that Fay wouldn’t have had anyone to hold her hand when she’d first arrived.
“Okay then, you can do this, too,” she told herself. “Batty!” she exclaimed louder, seeing the one person she recognized at one of the benches in the main part of the hall.
The maid’s head was bobbing low over a dirty, banged up knight’s lap. His eyes were shut tight and his head was thrown back as he gripped the edge of the table. Sophie’s eyes widened in horror at the sight. Was Batty being abused? She’d read about the atrocious things that happened to women in this time who had no protection, but here in the great hall of Grancourt Castle? Surely not? She hurried over to make sure Batty wasn’t in distress and found that she was stitching up a wound in the battered man’s thigh. The odd grimace on his face had been from agony, not ecstasy.
“Er, can I help?” she asked, feeling relieved and stupid at the same time.
Batty shook her head, not breaking her concentrated stitching for a moment. Sophie’s stomach turned over at the sight of the long, black thread sliding jerkily through the man’s flesh. The wound wasn’t too deep but it was long and Batty was only about a third of the way through closing it up. Sophie wanted to run before she fainted, but held herself steady. This, too, was part of real medieval life. She may as well soak it all in. Speaking of soaking, the knight’s thick wool tunic was soaking up gobs of his blood.
“Was there a battle?” she asked in alarm, tearing her eyes away from the blood to focus on the man’s face.
He opened his eyes and looked at her. He was covered in grime, but grinned cheekily. His clear, brown eyes sparkled through the dirt that rimmed them.
“A bit of a battle as we set out. We’re all fine, though.” He held out a hand, which was surprisingly clean. “Brom, my lady. A pleasure, indeed, to meet you.”
Batty sighed through gritted teeth as she pulled up another stitch. “Brom, this is Lady Sophie, who was ill for supper. I hope you’re feeling better, Lady Sophie.”
“Much better, thank you, Batty,” she said, not taking her eyes off Brom’s smiling face. He was cute, with a mop of tangled, golden-tipped hair falling around his forehead and ears, a mischievous grin despite his obvious pain, and sparkling root beer-colored eyes. She held out her hand, remembering at the last minute not to shake his vigorously, but to let him gently grip her fingers.
“If you haven’t yet eaten, you must sit and partake of what is left.” Brom swept his chin at the plates of meat nearby. “I daresay I could use the distraction.”
“Please try to stay still,” Batty said with another sigh. She spared an irritated glance at Sophie. “Lady Fay went to look for you,” she told her, eyes shooting daggers.
Sophie did want to ply Fay with questions but, right that moment, she wanted to get to know Brom better. The one thing she knew for certain was that she had to prove true love existed. Why not get a head start in that direction? And now that she wasn’t watching the gory operation Batty was so calmly carrying out, her hunger was back.
“I’ll have a quick bite before I find her,” she said, sliding onto the bench opposite Brom. Batty seemed to have sprung a leak because another soft sigh escaped her. Sophie wanted to ask Brom about the battle, but wondered if it would upset him. Or if it was polite, ladylike behavior in this time to show such bloodthirsty curiosity.
“Where did the fight take place? What started it?” Her curiosity got the better of her, clawing its way out like a cat stuffed into a sack.
“Ah, I wouldn’t want to bore you, my lady,” he said, a slight bead of sweat popping out on his brow as Batty continued sewing.
Without thinking, she reached over and grabbed his hand. “Is the pain terrible?” she asked, unable to imagine getting stitches without anesthetic. What did they have in this time? She’d always been more concerned with the furnishings, clothing, and architecture, and now regretted blocking out the castle restoration’s herbal gardener’s long lectures about the fascinating medicines they employed during this time. Well, it would be fascinating to her now, that was for sure. “And I assure you, I wouldn’t be bored at all to hear about your, er, valiant battle.” Oh, she was positive that was taking things a bit far, but he didn’t seem fazed.
“Unfortunately, there are people who question Sir Tristan’s right to the land he inherited from Sir Andrew. It was a quick and dirty fight. The men were disorganized and poorly armed, so we routed them right away.” He glanced down at his leg and smirked. “I suppose not quickly enough, though. Sir Tristan was injured as well, or so I thought.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. She recognized the name Tristan. It was the man Fay had threatened to run off with, leaving Sophie to her own devices. Fay’s fiancé. But hadn’t Brom and his men just arrived? “Was Sir Tristan in the fight with you? I thought he was already here in the castle with…” she trailed off, not wanting to get anyone in trouble.
Was Fay and Tristan’s love clandestine? Maybe that was why the curse hadn’t been broken. If those two had been sneaking around in the woods or whatever, of course that wouldn’t be true love. It would need to be acknowledged by others. That was the whole point of a wedding, right?
Batty paused mid-stitch and looked up at her, eyebrows meeting over confused brown eyes. “This is the first time we’ve met Sir Tristan. Today. Sir Andrew has been here before though, of course.”
“Oh, right. I was thinking of Sir Andrew. How silly of me.” She wanted to cover her gaffe as smoothly as she could. “So, Sir Tristan was also injured? Certainly he’s been seen to?” It seemed something a member of the household would be concerned about, but she was sure Fay was on it if her beloved was hurt.
“Yes, that. I was positive I’d seen him get slashed in the shoulder. It looked far worse than my small scratch here.” Brom looked at her to see if she was impressed with calling his massive gash a mere scratch. And yes, she had to admit she was, shaking her head in disagreement over his assessment. Gratified, he continued. “But when I insisted on looking at it to see if he needed the physician, it was nothing. Just an old scar from another fight.”
“Perhaps it was all the bleeding that made you think you saw something you didn’t,” she said, patting his hand. Batty was almost done and she had a feeling it wouldn’t be proper to continue sitting with him after the maid left.
“That very well might be,” he said appreciatively. “I’ve been lightheaded before due to injuries. Do you have much experience with healing, then?”
“None at all,” she admitted. “Well, besides the basics. Keeping things clean and all that.”
He shrugged, then nodded. “I shall endeavor to do that, my lady.”
She felt a blush creeping up her neck and looked down. She actually felt like a fair maiden under his admiring gaze. He grunted and she looked up to see Batty had tied a firm knot and now snipped the waxy threads with a pair of tiny, golden scissors that magically appeared from a small purse at her waist. Except for the fact that Sophie still had her hand over Brom’s, purely for comfort, she would have thought she was watching a perfectly staged movie. Everything was so real.
“If it gets inflamed, find the physician,” Batty said dully. “Lady Sophie, shouldn’t you go to Lady Fay now? She did seem to want to speak to you quite urgently.”
Yes, well, she would. Sophie looked longingly at the cold slices of meat she’d forgotten to eat while speaking with Brom. She’d have to find sustenance elsewhere, she supposed. Surely the gown didn’t bring her here to starve her. Standing, she bobbed a curtsy and told Brom she hoped to see him again soon. Which she instantly regretted because he was a guest in her home. Of course she’d see him again.
“It would be my utmost pleasure, as meeting you has been.”
Oh, she liked that. She liked this brave warrior quite a bit already. She couldn’t wait to find Fay and tell her they would be on their way home before they knew it. But first, she’d find the kitchen and finally get something to eat.
*
The kitchen wasn’t where it was supposed to be either. All those smug historians and architects had really gotten it wrong. By the time she finally found it, outside and through a small courtyard, she was about to eat her own arm. When the cook tried to give her noise for missing supper and then coming begging, she stuck her nose in the air and haughtily demanded bread and cheese.
“At least,” she added a bit more meekly. The cook stared down his long nose at her, then burst out laughing, finally loading up a platter of goodies for her. He snapped his fingers and a small boy hurried out from behind a giant cauldron—was that where the kid lived? And then the boy carried it upstairs for her.
Fay was already in a nightgown, lying leisurely on top of the rumpled bedclothes.
“I thought you might have found your way back to the twenty-first century,” Fay said dryly, snapping shut a heavy book and heaving it off her lap.
“I might have,” Sophie said eagerly. “I mean, I found someone who might be a love candidate anyway.”
Fay sat up straighter. “Already? How is that possible?” The serving boy scurried in, looking devastated at interrupting, set the platter on the table, bowed, and ran off. Fay stared agog at the feast. “And how did you manage to get all that food? I could see if you snuck a wedge of cheese up your sleeve, but it’s clear Cook put that together.”
“Oh yes, the cook seemed very nice,” Sophie said, sitting down and tucking into her meal. The meat was tough and bland, the bread was full of odd seeds, but she devoured it all gratefully. A real medieval meal!
“He’s not the least bit close to nice,” Fay said, joining her at the table and nibbling at a tart. “Tell me what you mean by finding a love interest already.”
Sophie gulped some wine to chase the dry meal down her throat and leaned forward eagerly. “He’s one of the knights, or maybe a squire? He’s extremely cute and I think he might have been flirting with me. His name is Brom and—”
Fay held up her hand like a traffic cop, making a rude noise. “No, no way. Brom belongs to Batty. Maybe another of Tristan’s squires, but not Brom.”
Sophie wrinkled up her brow, feeling suddenly territorial. “What do you mean, he belongs to Batty? She was stitching up his leg, that’s true, but unless that’s some sort of medieval mating ritual I don’t ever recall reading about, I didn’t see a bit of chemistry between them. And I’m certain there was a spark between us when we were chatting.”
“Well, douse it, then,” Fay said.
“Didn’t you read the book? It said Brom likes Batty, at least the first time, or something like that.”
“Okay,” Sophie agreed cautiously. She did remember something to that effect and it hadn’t made much sense to her. Of course, there wasn’t much about her situation that did make sense. And she wanted to put things right as quickly as possible. “But—”
Fay sputtered and huffed. “No buts. He was head over heels for her and if the damned curse hadn’t reset, I’m positive they’d be engaged by now.” She crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, looking at Sophie accusatorily. “I’d be married and this place would be set free of the curse, but you’re here now and we’ve got to start all over again.”
Sophie put down her chunk of bread and looked at Fay blankly, barely understanding though the words were all plain enough. “What are you talking about?”
“There’s a time limit. I think it’s a year, but it may be slightly more or less. I didn’t know about it right away so I wasn’t paying attention.” She waved her hand in the air. “The passage of time isn’t exactly something anyone really keeps track of. Every once in a while there’s a religious celebration, and then there’s planting and harvesting, but it’s not like anyone’s ticking off a calendar. I think if Tristan and I had been able to get married before the curse reset, it might have been broken—” Fay put her face in her hands and rubbed at her eyes while groaning. “I’m acting like an expert, but I have no idea what went wrong or how that dress ended up in a place you could get your curious little hands on it. Honestly, I’m angry enough to throw something.”
“I’m sorry,” Sophie said. “But if Brom doesn’t remember Batty and she doesn’t remember him, then what’s the problem? And maybe this is one of the times he doesn’t like her. The quicker I fall in love, the quicker we can break the curse. Really break it, within its time limit, and get back home.”
Fay barked a short, bitter laugh as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Are you sure you read the book? Or that awful scroll?” She slapped the table hard enough to rattle the wine jug. “You know what happened to me in our time, right? You said it yourself. I’m dead. Probably buried in the same cemetery as my aunt and my parents. You put on that dress and dropped dead, too. You think we’re going to rise up out of our graves and no one will notice? I’m probably half-rotted by now.” She choked back a sob and pushed away from the table. Taking up her giant book, she dragged herself back into bed, swiping at her tears. “We’re here forever, Sophie. We have to make the best of it, and I won’t have you stealing Batty’s true love. I’d live through this curse a dozen times before I let you.”
Sophie felt hot tears streaming down her own cheeks. She’d only managed a few bites before Fay attacked her with that cruel tirade. Once again, her appetite was stolen. She pushed away the tray and stared at a vibrantly colored tapestry of a farmland scene. There was a cold, awkward silence until a side door opened and someone Sophie hadn’t yet seen came in. Long, dark brown braids hung over each bony shoulder and she wore a wine red dressing gown that made her pale skin look nearly translucent.
Fay shot off the bed and ran for the garderobe, probably to keep this new girl from seeing her tears. Sophie hastily wiped her own face, but it was too late.
“Sophie dear, are you still feeling poorly?” She pulled up a chair close to Sophie and inspected the tray of food. “Have you eaten any of this? If your stomach is still upset, perhaps just have a few sips of wine and go back to bed.”
Another girl with a pinched expression on her face hurried through the same door, with Batty on her heels. “Lady Anne, you shouldn’t be up. Not after all that coughing at supper drove you to your bed.”
Sophie looked back and forth between the two new girls, trying to memorize their features. Anne. The pale girl had to be Anne. When she’d skimmed the book earlier, there had been a list of names, with short descriptions. And she’d heard Anne mentioned before by both Fay and Batty. She was the oldest sister here.
Sophie had an older brother back in her own time—she gulped to realize he must have been informed of her death by now. How devastated would he be? Thinking his baby sister was so cool to get to go to England and restore a ruined castle. What had her last words to him been? Something inconsequential, she was sure of it. How could she have ever known when she boarded that plane in Alexandria that she’d never make it back home?
She shoved away those thoughts and forced herself to concentrate on her new family. If the pale girl was Anne, and the brown-haired, rosy-cheeked wren of a girl was Batty, the other one had to be Marjorie, Anne’s maid. She mentally heaved a sigh, wondering how she was going to keep track of everyone. Fay came out of the garderobe, her eyes a bit red. If Anne noticed, she was too busy worrying about Sophie to comment.
“Fay, have you made sure Sir Tristan’s taken care of? I’m feeling much better so I think I can go down if not.”
No sooner had Anne said these words than a bout of coughing had her doubling over in her chair. Marjorie hurried forward, trying to make Anne return to her own room.
“Nice try, Anne,” Fay said. “I can see you’re right as rain. Don’t worry about Tri—Sir Tristan. He’s snug as a bug.” Fay’s cheeks went beyond the crimson of Anne’s dressing gown. She cut a glance at Sophie before saying, “I was about to check in on him again, but not if both you and Sophie are ill.”
“I’m fine,” Sophie piped in, not wanting any more of Fay’s harsh words. If she wanted to sneak off and spend the night with her fiancé, Sophie wouldn’t be the one to get in the way. “Go see to Sir Tristan.”
Anne made a terrible, phlegmy sound and shook her head. “If he’s been attended to already, there’s no need to check in on him again. He wasn’t injured, was he?”
Fay opened her mouth, but Batty spoke first. “His squire, Brom, said he thought he had been injured, but it turned out he was mistaken.”
Sophie nodded along, remembering him saying that as well, and earned herself a dirty look from Fay.
“Goodnight,” Marjorie said loudly, pulling Anne away. “We should all get to sleep. It will be a busy day seeing to the guests tomorrow.”
They left through the door they’d come from, with Batty hovering around until Fay sent her off with a growl. Sophie instantly looked contrite when Batty slammed the door behind her. With a sigh, Fay opened her book again and squinted down at it. Sophie sat frozen at the table, about to suggest if Fay wanted to leave it was fine, when Fay looked up at her quizzically.
“You don’t know anything about medicine, do you? Or since you’re a historian, about what kind of herbs might be useful for curing lung disease?”
Sophie shook her head, both in confusion at the question and Fay’s odd turnabout. Before the interruption, Sophie had been positive her new sister wanted to toss her out the window, but now she seemed positively chummy.
“I was only in my second year of college,” she said. “If we were going to study medicines of the times, we hadn’t gotten to it, yet. I know CPR, though,” she said.
Fay nodded. “I do, too. But we need something preventive.” She looked wistful. “Look, spoiler alert, but Anne’s going to die if we can’t figure out what’s wrong with her and how to cure it.”
Sophie gasped. “How do you know that?”
“Because I already lived through it once. The only good thing about the curse resetting is Anne’s alive again. But she’ll die once it snows for the first time and I mean to try and stop it. Then if you can manage to break the curse, perhaps she’ll have a good, long life. We can’t get back to our own time, but we could all make a good life in this one.”
Fay’s words had a hollow ring to them and it was Sophie’s turn to get upset. “Why didn’t you write about all this horrible stuff in your little fairytale book? You made it sound so lovely. All those cute stories about daily life. Who wouldn’t want to come to a place like you described?”
Fay’s jaw dropped slowly open and she just as slowly shut it. “I don’t suppose I really thought anyone would find the book.” She looked embarrassed. “And it was mostly me just transcribing things Batty told me. She’s the storyteller. I only signed it with my real name because I missed my Uncle Randolph so much and didn’t want him to be too sad. I was all he had left, you know.”
“He did miss you, I could tell,” Sophie said. “But he had the castle, too. He was passionate about restoring it, and even more so after I showed him the book with your signature.”
“He did see it, then?” Fay asked, brightening. “Did he believe it?”
“He believed it instantly. He said he’d know your handwriting anywhere because you always made the grocery lists for him.” She paused while Fay chuckled, laughing softly as well. “He wanted to find that dress more than I did, I think. If he’d found it first, I swear he would have put it on and come here himself.”
Fay clapped delightedly. “I bet he would have.” She wrinkled her brow. “I think I could have fixed him up with someone, too. Lady Heloise would be perfect for him.”
“He’d break the curse in two shakes with his charm,” Sophie agreed, starting to feel a little morose again. “You should go to your Sir Tristan,” she urged. “I’ll be all right by myself.”
Fay looked like she wanted to jump up and fly out the door, but she shook her head and resolutely pulled her book back onto her lap. “It’s okay. I saw him during supper and after as well. I think it’s safe to say he’ll continue to remember me tomorrow, and I really need to keep studying these medical books I borrowed from Uncle Edgar so I can find a cure for Anne.”
“So when the curse reset?” Sophie hoped this wouldn’t release a new maelstrom of rage onto her, but Fay only slumped a little over the massive medical tome.
“It was all the same as the first day I arrived. That would be today,” she added with a wry twist to her lips. “Sir Tristan and his men arrived for the first time, to pay fealty to Father—”
“You call him Father like he really is,” Sophie interrupted, trying not to let thoughts of her own dad break through the mental dam she’d set up to try and cope with her new situation. He and her mom had been divorced for five years and she only saw him once a month. They’d grown apart, but he was still her dad. Images of him getting the news that she was gone started leaking through her defenses. Would he cry? Of course he would. She’d only seen him cry once in her life and it was one of her worst memories. “Do you honestly think of Sir—” she stumbled over the name. Was it Wallace?
“Yes,” Fay said. “Sir Walter is my father, our father, for all intents and purposes. And he’s lovely. You’ll see.” Fay gave her a hard look. Sophie was afraid she would ask questions about the family she’d left behind. She couldn’t have answered without losing it.
“Sir Tristan arrived for the first time,” she prodded to put Fay back on track.
“Oh, right. Yes. Though, of course, he’d been to the castle several times during the last year, only nobody remembered. And Tristan looked straight at someone he definitely knew as if he’d never seen her before. At first I thought he wasn’t going to remember me, either. I could tell it was affecting him, the change over, I guess you’d call it. He was really struggling.”
“How awful,” Sophie said. No wonder a little thing like a wooden chest appearing out of nowhere hadn’t affected Fay.
“But he did remember me, thank God.” Fay shook her head in frustration. “That, to me, proves it was true love. But everything else had completely reverted to how it had been the first day I arrived. Tristan was already here, of course, but his men came up on horseback just as before. He told me a little bit ago that he hurried out to meet them and they acted like he’d been with them all along.”
“Maybe that’s why Brom thought he was injured. So strange.” Sophie crawled into the big bed and got under the covers. “Scary, too.”
Fay nodded. “Yes. Now that I think back, he was injured that first time. See, there are cracks in the curse. We put a dent in it for sure, but I’m not certain if that’s a good thing or not.”
“Didn’t you say something about a dungeon earlier?” Sophie asked, enraptured by the story. Almost forgetting she was now a part of it.
“I was stuck in one of ours for five days. I was starving and dehydrated but I could tell the moment everything changed because I went from feeling like I was near death to feeling fine. Just covered in filth, as you saw.”
“How did you end up in the dungeon?”
“No idea. I got conked on the head. Everyone was looking for me outside the castle. Thought I was kidnapped. It was a miracle Tristan found me before the curse reset or I’d be dead in this time as well as ours.”
“So, it really wasn’t you who put the dress back in its chest?”
“Certainly not,” Fay said, thumping the brittle pages of the book and raising a tiny puff of dust. “That’s supposedly instant death and, also, I’d never do that to anyone else. I was coming up here to take it away and burn it. Then I was going to run away with Tristan.”
Sophie didn’t need to be reminded that she had thrown a wrench into that finely-tuned machine. “I wonder how it got there, then.”
“Who knows? Between that and me getting chucked in the dungeon, we think someone in the castle might be helping the curse.”
“Or something,” Sophie said, burrowing deeper under the blankets.
“Don’t say that!” Fay squeaked, scurrying to get under the covers as well. They both giggled nervously as they realized what false security they were relying on. “Why would you even think that?”
Sophie shrugged. “Is it so far-fetched? I mean, look at us right now. We both put on a pretty dress and ended up more than six hundred years in the past. Are we in the same dream? Is this some kind of weird afterlife we both ended up in?” She wrung the soft sheets in her fists. “It feels real enough to me. It could very well be something not—”
“Don’t say it,” Fay demanded threateningly while pulling the covers up higher. “I’ll pinch you, I swear it.”
“Something not human,” she finished defiantly. And got a hard pinch on the meaty part of her upper arm. “Either way, we’re in danger,” she said, rubbing the painful spot.
Fay closed the book and put it on the floor beside the bed. “I had it broken, I really did. But whoever or, fine, whatever, didn’t play fair. Now it’s all wonky. And even though Tristan still loves me, I can’t run away because I want to try and save Anne.”
“We’ll get it this time,” Sophie assured her new sister. The soft bedding and gentle moonlight filtering through the window, not to mention the exhaustion of what she’d been through catching up to her, made her want to drift off to dreamland. “I appreciate you staying with me and not going to be with Sir Tristan,” she said. “I can’t wait to meet him tomorrow.”
Fay said something in response, but Sophie didn’t make it out, too far gone in sleep.