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Kitty. She interfered when she was not wanted and vanished when she was needed, every single time.
    Helena threw her spoon across the table, startling Hope and forcing Thekla back to the here and now. Thekla rose, a decision abruptly made. She was going to pay her elder sister a visit. She did not mean to offer a truce, for there could be none between them. Thekla went only to demand that Kitty stay out of their lives.

    “I know you planned for this,” Thekla said at Kitty’s doorway, refusing to cross the threshold. “We are here. You may leave us alone now.”
    Kitty coughed. “I have no intention of disturbing you or our sisters. They know where to find me if they have a need.”
    Thekla shook her head. “We did not come here for you, but in the hopes of undoing what you have done.”
    “I know.”
    Thekla refused to react, though she could feel the familiar anger bubbling in her gut. “You are to leave the child alone.”
    “Do you think to order me about as you do the rest of our sisters?” Kitty chuckled. “I will do as I please.”
    “You always have.” Thekla spat before walking away.
    Thekla crossed the courtyard and left Kitty’s house behind her. She hoped never to have to return.
    The forest was close all around, not the straggling trees that adorned the grounds but the thick, wild wood where Louis had once hunted. At the edge of the flagstones she walked under the pergola that bordered the garden wall. It dripped with a froth of clematis and dark ivy that had wound its way up the stones. The tunnel ended at a small wooden door in a frame of crumbling stones.
    “I’ll have to put a lock on this door,” Thekla muttered as she pulled it open. “I won’t have that woman thinking she can stroll over here whenever she likes.”
    Beyond lay the kitchen gardens, where a bench invited her to rest. Thekla felt needles of pain shoot through her knees. A moment will not hurt, she thought, as she lowered herself onto the hard seat with a sigh. She was too old for this nonsense. Perhaps they should face Kitty’s gift and maybe, if they were lucky, that would be an end to it. But how to face something you don’t fully understand?
    “I must be mad, to think such a thing,” Thekla said out loud. She blamed Kitty; the sight of her had caused Thekla to lose all reason. Family drew family in these dark woods, but until the christening, it had been years since she’d seen Kitty’s face. There in that room recognition had been instinctive and at Kitty’s door, it had happened just so, again. Thekla’s body had tensed and her breath had come in short bursts from her lungs. Kitty was a ghost come to life and Thekla was done with being haunted.
    The past began to circle Thekla as she sat in the quiet garden. Unlike Katza, she didn’t like to look too closely at it. She usually summed up history concisely: Louis died and Katza left. She did not dwell on the myriad of emotions that lurked just to the side of those words. She was afraid of those emotions and afraid of what she’d become if she acknowledged them. Thekla had to be strong for her sisters; she had to hold what was left of the family together. Though she felt old and tired, she knew now was no time to weaken.

Chapter 7
    Kitty sulked after Thekla left. She felt no remorse for anything she’d done after her brother’s death. It was what she hadn’t done to prevent it that plagued her. Thekla judged her and found her lacking, but her sisters would never know the truth about Louis, gods willing, nor should they. They all believed his death was accidental—he drowned, no more than that. Their mother, Magdalena, had made it clear. Kitty’s younger sisters were never to know how or why it had happened. Kitty sighed. Even Mama had not known all of the ugly truth.
    The deaths had occurred so quickly. First the king murdered, then Louis drowned, and before Kitty could come to terms with either, her father had died of sorrow for both. Her Sight was