Princess of Glass - Jessica Day George [67]
“She’s trying to replace her goddaughter,” Poppy said without looking up. She was knitting another charm.
“Do you really think …?” Eleanora blinked.
“I really do,” Poppy said. “She wants her goddaughter alive and married to a prince of the Danelaw. She’s trying to erase her mistake.”
“But that won’t… I mean, she knows that I’m not her, doesn’t she?”
Poppy shrugged. “Who can say?” She stopped knitting, unraveled a few stitches, and started up again.
Eleanora was filled with a sudden horror: she would never be free of the Corley! Even if she wasn’t called upon to dance at the masked ball, even if the substitution of Poppy worked, the Corley would still chase after her.
“Don’t worry,” Poppy said. “We will fight, and we will win.” Her needles clicked together and the yarn slid through her fingers.
“How can you just sit there and knit?” Eleanora pulled herself up in the bed, her breath coming fast. “How can you just sit there at all? We might be killed!”
“I have to,” Poppy said levelly.
“What do you mean, you have to? No one is holding a knife to your throat, forcing you to knit those things!”
Poppy stopped knitting.
She set the yarn and needles on the little table by her chair, folded her hands in her lap, and looked at Eleanora with her large violet eyes.
“I have to keep knitting,” she said in low voice. “Because I’m the strong one.” And then her eyes filled with tears, and Eleanora watched in helpless shock as Princess Poppy of West-falin sobbed like a child.
“I’m the strong one,” she sobbed. “The tough one. Everyone says so. I’m not like Daisy, I’m not like Lily, I’m not gentle and sweet and ladylike. My father says it, everyone says it. When we had to dance, at the end, every night and we were so tired and sick I heard Papa saying to the doctor, ‘Ask them, Hans, see if they’ll tell you what’s happening. But don’t bother with Poppy. She’ll never crack, she’s as tough as an old boot.’
“And I was. I never cried, I never gave up. I did what Rose and Galen said, and I never cried. But I thought it was over, I didn’t think I would have to do this again, to face something like this. Without my sisters, without my father and Walter and Galen to protect me. I can’t play cards against the Corley, I can’t swear her to death, so I have to knit. There’s nothing else I can do.”
“You can dance,” said a voice from the doorway.
Both girls turned, and saw Prince Christian standing there, his gaze fixed on Poppy. Seeing the intensity of his eyes on Poppy’s tear-streaked face, Eleanora knew that the prince could never have loved Lady Ella the way he loved Poppy, and she wondered if Poppy knew.
“You can dance as Lady Ella,” the prince said, coming the way into the room and taking Poppy’s hands. “Dance with me. And before the clock strikes midnight, we will defeat her.”
“Blast,” Poppy said shakily. “It would have to be dancing. I really was hoping to challenge her to a game of cards.”
Eleanora laughed out loud.
Replacement
Hands shaking, Poppy poured water over the fire she had built in the parlor grate. She uttered the words that Eleanora had taught her, and waited. She wondered if the rhyme would work, since the Corley was not, in fact, Poppy’s “dear godmother.” Behind her, she heard tense breathing and rustling clothing, but she shut her ears and said it again.
“Cinders, cinders, smoke and water, take me to my dear godmother!”
The mantel arched up, and what had been a fireplace became a passageway.
Everyone in the room took a step backward, and Poppy trod on Dickon’s toes. She blurted out an apology, straightened her spine, and took a firmer grip on her pistol. She was holding it at her side, with a shawl draped across her shoulders to hide the weapon. She didn’t know how much good it would do against an immortal creature like the Corley, but its weight comforted her all the same.
“I should go with