“Butyou! How could you hurt a Volkonsky wolf?” Sophie felt the tears splash onto her face. “They live to protect you!”
“But you must understand,” the princess said, “I couldn’t leave that creature loose!” She laughed, but sounded nervous. “It was for your safety!”
“What do you mean?” Sophie felt the room spin. “He wasn’t going to hurt anyone!”
The princess shook her head slowly. “If only that were true,” she whispered. “But I have seen a wolf when he kills. He would not be kind.” She leaned toward Sophie. “You think it would be quick? One bite and it’s all over? Not with a wolf. A snap, a bite, and he would sit and wait, watching you bleed before he came and licked up the pool of your blood. Tell me, would you enjoy that?”
Sophie stared at the beautiful face, lips as red as wolf blood.
“If only I could find the diamonds, Sophie” — the princess put her hand to Sophie’s face and moved a strand of hair out of her eyes — “I could live here happily, with no worry for the future. We could be friends!”
She glanced at the wolf’s blood on the floor. “I am sorry about today. The general has made me a little crazy with his demands for money … What I need now is a friend.”
She smiled, but it made her face look unbearably sad. “Just one friend,” she whispered. “I had hoped it would be you …”
“Tell him to go!” Sophie said. “Tell him to leave you alone!”
“Only if you will stay.” The princess was already moving toward the stairs. “And help me?”
As the princess ran after the general, Sophie leaned against the wall. How could she help this woman?
The White Dining Room was empty. The remains of the general’s unfinished meal were still on the table, Sophie’s chair still on its side. But where were Delphine and Marianne?
Sophie ran to the nursery and pushed open the door to see her friends sitting on her bed by the window. Masha was pouring them tea from asamovaron the table.
“We heard shots!” Marianne ran toward her. “We were so frightened.”
“Masha brought us here,” Delphine said. She smiled at the girl, who blushed. “She’s Dmitri’s sister.”
“Dmitri so brave!” Masha said as she handed Sophie a glass of tea. “General say he must shoot wolves!” Her eyes were round. “But Dmitri spit on general’s boots!”
“And the other wolf?” Sophie whispered. “The wolf that escaped?”
Masha shook her head. She turned away.
“What happened?” Marianne asked. They all sat together on the bed. “Honestly, Sophie, we’re worried. It’s all gone weird.”
Delphine stroked Sophie’s arm. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “We need to leave.” As if everything had suddenly been decided in the saying of those words, she ran to the dresser and started pulling out sweaters, jeans, a pile of underwear, moving as fast as if she risked missing a train. “Let’s just pack up everything. Come on, Marianne! You too, Sophie. Let’s just get ready and tell her she has to send us back to Saint Petersburg!”
Marianne, looking stunned, blinked up at Delphine. “I don’t want to go to Saint Petersburg,” she said slowly. “I want to go back to London … I want to gohome!”
Delphine refolded T-shirts. “Fine. We’ll go home. Just get a move on!”
“But …” Sophie swung her legs down onto the floor. Was this how it was going to end? The princess wasn’t the person she appeared to be, she had let them down, but she was still in terrible trouble. “She asked for help.”
“But that’s just it,” Marianne sighed. She looked crumpled, as if someone needed to shake all the creases out of her. “We can’t help her.”
“But just to leave her with the general …”
“It’s not safe for us to stay.” Delphine’s voice was firm.
They would be like the Volkonsky princess, then, Sophie thought … fleeing the palace …
“Delphine’s right.” Marianne bent down and pulled her rucksack from underneath her bed. “We need to get out of here.”
It was as if none of them wanted to voice the problem in this apparently simple solution:How?How would they leave the palace? They packed the rest of their things silently.
Sophie, sitting on her bed, pulled the pencil box out of her rucksack. She opened it and took out the diamond ring. A gift from a Volkonsky princess. She would return it. Even if the princess did not think it so valuable, it might buy her some time with the general.
