Chapter 96

Abby

“Again,” Imogen said.

I opened my eyes. “I’ve done it nine times.”

“And you’ve lost it nine times. Again.”

We were sitting on the floor of her room in the east wing of the packhouse, the one with the window she had asked for. She had moved the bed against the wall on her first night and rolled up the rug, and now the bare boards were covered in chalk marks I wasn’t allowed to step on. Her bags sat in the corner. Nobody had touched them. Cassandra had made sure of that personally, after a conversation in the hallway that I had heard only half of and that had ended, somehow, with the two of them drinking tea together in the kitchen until midnight.

I still didn’t know whether they liked each other. I wasn’t sure they knew either.

Through the window,