Sorry about the numerous delays. Thankee to everyone who reviews – I'[m really sorry, I myself do not do it often enough, but I will make a big effort not to be so antisocial :D. Loves yas all.

Kartik does not approach me for days, until days turn into weeks and I am frozen solid. December falls, thick and drab, as tall and slender flowers the colour of the snow push their heads above the surface of the rock hard earth.

Christmas is near. Pippa has her dress, her dress the colour of the snow also. It seems everything is white these days.

Everything except the blackness.

It has not approached again, and I do not seek it. Instead I stay amongst friends, amongst friends and teachers and the delightful Cecily, whose upturns nose wrinkles every time she sees me. I do not care. I care for very little these days.

My time with Kartik has left me empty and aching. He was everything to me, and now he is gone. Nothing and no one will ever be able to replace him. I will marry, I suppose, some portly, balding, painfully boring character, who will talk about politics and brandy and inheritances, and I will grow beaky and pale and gossip in hushed voices about who has disgraced who, which society girl is rumoured to be with child, and I will dutifully pretend to love him and that will be enough.

What terrifies me most is the thought that this could be true. I could grow, I could learn, to accept this as my given fate. When I think of it, my heart becomes an animal, roaring and clawing at the bars of its cage, determined never to bend to anyone else's will. Yet sometimes, when I am alone and truthful, the future seems a comforting place. No Kartik and no problems and no secrets and no lies and no heartache and no magic and no gypsies.

Not one.

Pippa cries silently every day. Sometimes we cannot see the tears, but we know what she is doing to herself. Torturing her very soul with the thoughts, the possibilities, that she missed. The idea that if her mother were to listen, to really listen, maybe, maybe, she would take pity.

"I am writing to her daily, promising and threatening everything under the sun, but she will not take notice. But I know that maybe, just maybe, if I write one letter, one perfect letter which tells everything in faultless eloquence, then she will listen. She has to! I'm her daughter, she loves me, she wouldn't wish for me to be unhappy, it's all just a mistake, she thinks I'm just nervous, but I'm not, I'm really not, I can't stand the man, really I can't. But she doesn't know that, that must be it. She will break of the engagement immediately. She will, I know it, she loves me, she wouldn't want me to marry a man that I despise, she loves me...

"Doesn't she?"

And the most heartbreaking thing of all is that none of us can answer that question.

Felicity grows silent and surly in the days leading up to the wedding. She visits my chamber every night, and we steal away together, just to be. Pippa can think of nothing else, and Ann...

Ann has grown pinched and pale. And I know why. When Pippa marries, she will leave the school, leave and be a wife for evermore. And Ann believes that Felicity and I will no longer want her, and it shames me to admit that sometimes she is right.

Felicity and I need each other. I could not live without her ice-cold fingertips, her white gold hair, the way the moonlight plays on her arched back as we swim. The lake water tonight is icy, and Felicity has already undressed. She tease me from the water, and I stare mesmerised at the way is slips over her skin like the smoothest of velvet, the sheerest of silk.

I undress, bashfully still, and hurry to the waters edge. Although the water stabs me with a thousand silver daggers, I am glad of the cover it gives me body. Felicity does not swim over immediately, but lingers further in, goading me to follow her.

The lake still scares me. I do not know that, if we get closer to its centre, or we swim down deep enough, we will still remain here on this earth. Because whatever happens, I cannot face that world again. I cannot face the blackness again.

People need to embody fear, I understand now. They call them monsters or witches or demons. They call them ghouls or ghosts or vampires. Sometimes they are werewolves, and sometimes they are spiders, and sometimes they are creatures even more frightening.

But fear is not a person. Fear is not even a creature. Fear is something that rushes at you, claws its way down your throat and leaves you choking and broken. Fear slithers over you, and sometimes it seduces you, and it beckons you on to wild and foolish things. Fear is something that I cannot escape from.

Felicity is white.

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