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“Do you think I’m not strong enough to take it?”
I opened my mouth to reply, then closed it, thinking of what I’d said to Blackbird. So I leaned my head back against the tub’s rim, stared at the ceiling and told Starling Cecily’s story, exactly as Nancy had told it to me.
“You think that happened to my brother.” Starling’s voice sounded thin, strained.
I wished the water warmer. “You know as much as I do now. Your mother has no memory of what exactly happened with the baby and Titania—it’s weirdly blocked. She thinks Fafnir doesn’t remember either.”
“But you intend to try to find out.”
“What I can, yes.”
“He clearly recovered from being a puddle of melted goo,” she pointed out. I cracked an eye open to check her expression and, while she looked a bit wan, she gave me little smile. “That immortality thing comes in handy, I guess.”
“True.”
“How can I help?”
“I don’t think you can.”
“Gwynn!”
“No, this isn’t athing.I don’t think you realize that I just pretty much make stuff up as I go along. I play it by ear. I don’t know how you can help with Fafnir because I don’t know how the evening will go.”
“Fine.”
I washed my hair, thinking. “There is something you can do for me, but it might mean skipping the feast.”
“I can do that.”
“You could go talk to Walter for me.”
Starling wrinkled her nose, but then smoothed her expression. “Okay. I will. What about? Just anything? Pump him for information?”
I dried myself with the towel she handed me. “He thinks he wants the training I had, from Marquise and Scourge.” I hurried on before she could reply, unable to face her sympathy. “You know something of what I was like when I…got out of there. I can’t talk to him—to anyone, really—about just how horrible it was. I want you to talk him out of it.”
She began combing out my hair without a word. The quiet stretched between us while her thoughts hummed. “Does he need it—the training?” she finally asked.
“He needs training for sure, but without the torture part.”
“Hmm.”
“What? Don’tHmmme.”
“I’m just thinking—you’re always trying to protect people, Gwynn. Like you do with me, not telling me about Cecily’s baby. You survived what they did to you. Maybe Walter deserves that chance too.”
“It’s not an opportunity, Starling! It’s—”
“Shh.” She put a soothing hand on the top of my head. “I’ll talk to him and I’ll be honest and tell him what I’ve seen of how much you suffered. Because I do know something of how much that wounded you. But I also think you don’t realize how remarkable you are now because you did go through that. You have an enviable strength. I can understand how someone like Walter would look at you and want something of that.”
“The price was too high.”
“Was it? I wonder.”
“And it doesn’t feel like strength from the inside.” I sighed. “Maybe I should try to talk to him about it.”
She tapped me with the comb. “Trust me. I’ll tell him the truth. You gave me this job. Now let me do it. Okay?”
“Okay. But remember to take some decent food with you. Otherwise you’ll be eating cupcakes all night.”
