Page 28 (1/2)

As he stole back into the Palace without a sound, he was quite confident that he had acquitted himself perfectly—even the Prince could not have been so stealthy But as he shut the door to his own bedchaht like a fruit dashed against the wall

Dinarzad sat a slender stalk of straw in her hand She held it aloft, still s over the torch

“Well” She chuckled “You can’t bla” Shehi staircase Without another word she flung hireat lock The roostones, illuers of dahich pried at the

The boy yelped in frustration and kicked the er bed He let a few furious tears fall like blows onto the cold floor All was truly lost now—there were not even linens on the bed hich to fashion a rope He was a stupid child after all, stuck in a tower like the defor the , upside down, unnatural The boy punched the stone wall inhis bruised knuckles as his eyes watered in pain

Outside the tower keep, Dinarzad closed her aled breath, harsh as a sword drawn across a thick chain She knew she would be punished terribly for letting hiht Her welts had not yet healed from the last time a child escaped frohter, and no a would let terror or wounds show to anyone She banished her tears as she strode down the polished steps, the key tucked into her robes But when she crawled into her own bed, she began to weep silently under the wolf pelts, her tears wetting the down pillow like rain on the snow She wished for nothing but to sleep past her punishments and wake to a Palace with no children for her to look after, no whips tipped in lead, and no prized brothers to mock and loathe her

When the girl woke and the great wings had one, and she let hot, secret tears fall into the black earth

The night was full of weeping

Dinarzad brought the boy supper in the tower the next evening, just as rose and fla to divide the sky between the her exit with the slow rolling of the iron key in the lock The boy did not eat it all, though he was hungry He set aside so the apples like gold ornaments in useless hope

The boy leaned against the toall, seething He tried to reconstruct the story in hisinto itself like watercolors Aerie seee eyes, and he could not even recall so so simple as the color of Beast

Standing on his toes, he stretched to reach the -sill and peer into the Garden below, to spy at least the top of a cypress under which the girl h before hi slow

ly in the night wind And they were beautiful, because sheunder one of them

Except that she was not, for she stood in theup at the helpless boy with eyes wide and dark as an owl’s throat

The girl watched him silently It was not beyond the realy stones and ivy to rescue the boy, though she had certainly never heard of such a thing For athat he had looked for her

When it was fully dark, she hooked a toe into one of the cracks between stones and began to climb

The boy heard her scrabbling up the ivy and nettles that clothed the tower He was excited to know she drew near, but ashaain she that had hunted and tracked hi was not such a tragedy