by Lucy Tempest
But this was my only way out.
It was ironic that when I’d last seen my best friend, I’d chastised her about breaking into our local lord’s mansion through its second-floor window. She’d done it to rob his unbearable wife, to avenge me for when the harpy had ruined my book. She’d stolen me The Known World to replace it, and my obsession with it had resulted in our current tragedy. Now I needed Adelaide’s experience in climbing out of windows and her hooked rope.
I just needed her.
But if I were to ever see her again, I had to get out of here.
Eyes filling again with a burning oppression, I rushed to the wardrobe. A quick rummage revealed shelf upon rack of neatly folded and hung clothes and organized shoes, all sorted by color, but nothing to be used as a rope.
Trembling with frustration, I searched my mind for any tips Ada might have mentioned. But nothing struck me, not until I found a shelf of bedding.
It was the earliest memory of our friendship, when Adelaide had finally agreed to come over for tea. She’d regaled me with what I’d considered thrilling stories from a life lived alone and on the streets since her mother had died. One was about how she’d snuck out of an inn she’d worked at after robbing some abusive patron by climbing down a line of sheets.
Dragging a chair over, I got down everything I could reach, almost tipping myself back a few times. Once I had all the sheets on the floor, I got to work.
Excitement and urgency burned through me, shaking my hands as I tied the sheets’ ends together. I secured one end of the knotted snake to the bedpost before throwing the other out of the window. It went all the way down to the ground.
This was it. All I had to do was climb down and run to the gates. I counted on being able to open them, now I was on the inside. Without Maple, it would take me hours to walk back to Castor’s lodge, but that was the least of my worries. Once I arrived, my father and I would be free.
Holding on tight to the ledge of the window, I looked up and down the side of the castle, making sure no one was around to see me climbing down. The towers, the roof’s battlements and the gargoyles perched on every ledge seemed to be looking down at me warningly.
Shaking off the spooky sensation, I put one leg over the edge, gripped the sheet—
—and rolled out the window with a startled squawk.
Suffocating in fright, I clawed at the sheet, only for my hands to slide down their soft length, finding no traction. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see the plummet to my death…and slammed against the wall.
The collision emptied my lungs, snapped open my eyes. My hands had snagged on a knot, stopping my slide. Heart bursting out of my chest, I grappled with the sheet, kicking to bring it between my knees. I bumped into the rough façade again, flaring a rush of chafing pain at every point of contact. But that was nothing compared to what could have happened. I could have been lying on the ground in bloody, broken pieces right now.
That fate could be still in the cards. I was too far down to climb back into the room, and too far up a fall would surely kill me. And this was far, far more difficult and frightening than Adelaide had ever made it out to be.
Heart convulsing in guilt that I’d ever thought her life on the run exciting, I poured all my waning strength into clinging to my lifeline between hands and knees. This was the position I should have assumed from the beginning. There was still the risk I’d slip again and be unable to catch myself. But remaining in place was quickly wearing me out. I’d soon fall anyway.
Teeth clattering with gut-twisting dread and exertion, I moved my hands down a few inches below the knot, then lowered my legs by the same measure.
It worked. Now I had to do it again, and again, without any further disastrous slips.
After moments of trying to calm my breathing and gather my strength, I repeated the motion five times in a row, every muscle screaming.
I did get lower, but not by much. I still had what must be a fifty-foot drop beneath me, and I was fast losing strength, wriggling like a worm on a hook between the watchful gargoyles.
Then one of them moved its head towards me. “I knew you’d try to escape!”
Sheer terror slammed into me, snapping my grip. I left my scream high up in the air as I plummeted to the ground.
Chapter Seven
I grew ten times heavier as I plunged.
I couldn’t grab at my makeshift rope.
I couldn’t flail or scream or even close my eyes.
I was going to die, and I could only watch as the ground hurtled closer—and as the gargoyle abandoned its perch and dove after me, hands outstretched.
“I got you!”
It caught me in a swoop a few feet above the ground. I was as limp in its hold as wet blanket, paralyzed, everything inside me shutting down.
It soared back up to the room and deposited me just inside the window. Finding ground beneath my numb feet, I staggered to the bed, wrapped myself around the bedpost and sank down to the floor. I remained there for what felt like hours, stomach and heart squeezing each other in my throat, the whole world spinning in a violent vortex.
When everything finally stopped churning, I raised my eyes, found my savior hovering outside the window, flapping its wings. It looked decidedly less a stone demon and more a giant vulture.
“May I come in?”
It also sounded decidedly human. A polite one who was asking my permission to enter, after it had saved my life. I could argue it had endangered it in the first place, but I wouldn’t. I would have fallen even if it hadn’t startled me.
I could only nod dumbly, and it whooshed in through the huge window, my makeshift rope trailing behind it.
Once it landed before me, I finally saw what it was. “It” was a “she,” a redheaded girl with gnarled, talon-tipped feet and huge, scarlet wings sprouting from her back. She appeared a bit older than my eighteen years, with a lanky frame, a perfectly put together, oval-shaped face and creamy skin dusted with tiny freckles. Apart from the vulture’s feet and wings, she had big, bright yellow eyes, like an owl’s.
Though I vividly remembered the Beast’s annoyance, it was impossible not to stare. I’d never seen anything like her, not even in my storybooks, couldn’t even name what she was.
Licking chapped lips, I tried to speak once, twice, only to finally manage a wavering, “W-what are you?”
Hurt flashed across her face, but she dipped into a quick curtsey, smiling and sweet-voiced. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Fairborn. I am Jessamine. I am to be your lady’s maid.”
I’d heard of handmaidens and ladies-in-waiting, who frequently featured in my novels, working for nobility and royalty, but never a lady’s maid.
She shifted uncomfortably, avoiding my eyes and fidgeting with my makeshift rope. It was as if she was anticipating an attack, verbal or otherwise. One she was resigned to tolerate in silence.
She was afraid of me of all things? But why?
Though I couldn’t grasp how or why she was wary of me, I knew one thing. Whatever she was, she was clearly a person, and I had to put a stop to that immediately.
Peeling myself off the floor, I stood up, swayed before steadying myself. Then wiping sweaty hands against my dress, I tentatively offered her one, along with what I hoped was a friendly smile.
“Jessamine is such a pretty name, almost as pretty as you.”
Her face snapped up, rosy lips parted and eyes wide with surprise. “I—why thank you, Miss Fairborn.”
“Please, call me Bonnie.”
She bit her lip, twisting the sheets. “It’s not appropriate.”
“You saved my life.” I reached for one of her hands, gripped it. “You can call me whatever you want.”
She blinked at our hands confusedly, a hint of panic rising in her eyes. “But I am meant to serve you.”
I blinked up at her. “Why would a prisoner need a servant? Also, what exactly is a lady’s maid? Is it like a chambermaid?”
She let out a nervous snor
t before flushing and covering her mouth. “No, but I used to be a chambermaid. The Master just elevated my position from cleaning and tidying—caring for the chambers, to caring for you. I am supposed to be helping you get ready for dinner right now.” She raised the wrinkled, knotted sheets. “It would be wise to not mention this—little incident to anyone.”
At the mention of the Beast—of Leander, the mood soured.
“I don’t want to have dinner with him.”
Her hand dropped from mine. “Why?”
“Because he planned to imprison my father for life for plucking a rose, and now holds me hostage!” I wrapped my arms around my middle, trying to contain the still reverberating shock of my first brush with death. “It sounds like a fairy’s sense of justice, a rose being worth someone’s life. Are you all fairies here?”
“No, Miss.” She shook her head vigorously, flapping out the sheet she’d undone. I instantly felt guilty at the wrinkled, distorted material she’d probably spend ages ironing, or if she couldn’t, maybe get punished for ruining them—if she didn’t let on it had been my doing. She sighed. “But it wasn’t just any rose. If it were, well, none of us would be here.”
My extinguished curiosity suddenly reignited. “What do you mean?”
Jessamine made a pained face. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t supposed to mention that.”
I gripped her by the arms, trying to convey my confusion and desperation. “You have to tell me what’s going on here, please. What happened to this place? Where did you all come from? Is there any way I can get out?”
She shook her head again. Answering which question? The last one? Or was it a refusal to answer all of them?
A knock on the door had us jumping apart.
It was loud enough I thought the knocker would punch through the door. And I had a feeling I knew who it was.
Jessamine hurried to stuff the sheets under the bed before rushing to open the door. But there was no one there. Only a tray sat on the floor. She scooped it up and came back to me.
She extended the exquisitely worked silver tray and I shook my head. It had a glass bowl full of crystalized fruit, an expensive treat I’d only been able to afford once every midwinter. Putting the tray aside, Jessamine still insisted on handing me the accompanying note.
In a script too neat to be Leander’s, it said: Join me for dinner.
Enraged, I dropped the note back on the tray, hoisted it out of the room, clattered it where it had been left and slammed the door shut.
I woke up on the edge of the bed, as someone banged on the door.
It took me disoriented moments to put together my situation. I hadn’t gone down to dinner last night, to Jessamine’s utter horror. I’d gone to bed without eating or changing.
Judging by the gloomy light outside, it was the crack of dawn. Or maybe that was what midday looked like in this miserable castle.
The banging came once again, and groaning, I flung off the covers and stomped to the door.
This time I found a small powder-blue box with a note on top of it.
Come to breakfast.
Clearly Leander’s demand, but still in someone else’s script.
I considered leaving the box unopened, but curiosity got the best of me. I bent and opened it, found a brass and jade ring on a velvet cushion. Not even up to wondering why he was sending me these things, I slammed both box and door shut.
Shuffling back to stuff myself under the heavy covers, I poured frustrated tears into the satin pillowcase. I escaped my new terrible reality by sleeping all day.
On the third day, Jessamine insisted on getting me out of bed, telling me she’d be punished if I didn’t. Hating the beastly Leander even more for that, I forced myself up. I was in urgent need of bathing.
The bathroom was as spectacular as my room, way beyond anything I’d ever seen or read about. After a luxurious bath I could only distantly appreciate, I sat at the vanity dresser, resigned to letting Jessamine primp me up. She’d sifted through the drawers, producing too-pale face powder containers with their own mirrors, decorative tubes of lip pigments, flower-shaped hairclips and colorful powder palettes she called “eyeshadow.”
Though she’d told me she only knew how to style hair, here I sat, with her attempting to paint my face. Once she was done, I would try my hand at braiding her hair. I wanted to see if I’d been complex-braiding my hair or just knotting it unevenly.
Trying to ignore the ridiculous colors being applied to my face, I watched it intently in the clear, unblemished mirror. I’d never seen my reflection with such clarity.
I’d always been told that I’d gotten my impish features from my mother. But I could barely remember her, so I searched my face for hers, for what wasn’t from my Fairborn side. It meant she’d had a heart-shaped face, with big, upturned, vivid-blue eyes, high cheekbones, a small nose and a full mouth that encroached on her rounded chin, making it appear smaller than it was. The one feature I’d evidently inherited from my father was my chestnut-brown hair, which fell into big waves down my back when I let it down. I always preferred to hold it up in a ponytail.
“Do you have any sisters?” I asked Jessamine, trying not to flutter my lashes as she ran her brush over my eyelid.
“I wish. I have two brothers, one older, one younger.”
“Are they like you?”
“Like me how?”
“You know…” I flapped my hands at my sides.
She let out a dry cough. “No. No, they’re not. I was not. Always like this, I mean.”
A soft knock at the door made Jessamine’s hand slip, smudging the lip pigment on my mouth. She’d given up on answering it after the first two days, so we remained in place, watching the door crack open.
A man’s voice said, “Mind if I come in?”
Jessamine shot up straight, anxiously adjusting her hair as she called out, “Come in!”
And in came something that overfilled my lungs with a trapped scream.
It was one thing for the snake-woman who’d carried my father off to exist, for me to be held captive by the wolfman and for my newest friend to be part bird. I'd either never heard of such things or heard very little about them. This one though, I’d heard and read plenty about.
The source of the eerie clomping I’d been hearing everywhere was a red-bearded, auburn-haired man in a slate waistcoat and a blue dress shir—with fuzzy brown legs, iron-grey hooves—and big goat horns!
A satyr! A being of dark magic, worshipped by occultists in my island, and a staple engraving in tomes about monsters.
“Good afternoon.” The goat-man stopped a few feet into the room, his smile and tone shockingly good-natured. “I thought it was about time we met.”
As I rose on shaking legs, snippets of books and town elders’ stories, with demonic depictions and anecdotes popping to the surface of my mind like bubbles in boiling stew. My instinct was to hurl anything heavy at him and hurtle to lock myself in the bathroom. I instead tried to swallow my fears—and the memory of a particularly nasty rendering of a goat-man maniacally chasing a young girl. In that story, the girl had prayed to be turned into a flower or a fountain to escape capture by the satyr.
But Jessamine was certainly not fleeing, or praying the gods would save her from this satyr at any cost. If anything, her reaction to his presence was—peculiar, as she played with her fingers and fluttered her big mesmerizing eyes at him.
It was clear she didn’t fear him, not like she did her master. And it was as clear he could see my agitation as he broadened his smile as he tried to cover his horns with his curls. “I am more likely to eat flowers than I am to chase you, I promise.”
I blinked, taken aback. Had he read my mind? Or did he know the tales told of his kind?
Not knowing which was worse, and if he was toying with me, I stiffly said, “To what do we owe the visit?”
He made a staying gesture before rushing back out, returning in a moment with a tray spread in covered dishes. “You refused
to come to every meal, so I thought I’d bring one to you.”
The clip of his hooves was hair-raising until he reached the carpet. But as he approached, he appeared less like the embodiment of pastoral evil and more like Jessamine, a mostly human, somewhat animal creature. Different enough to cause initial fright, but not to the point they were hard to look at, once the first alarm had passed.
There was also the fact that he had a human head, rather than a goat’s. Or the ghastly hybrid of Leander’s. His eyes were almost as big and as blue as mine, matching his wide, youthful face that shouldn’t have been capable of sprouting such a thick beard. His warm, welcoming grin filled them, an easy and artless expression that only grew when he acknowledged Jessamine. For the stuff of nightmares, he was pretty dreamy.
“Good to see you keeping our guest company, Miss Quill,” he greeted her, stepping around us to set the tray in the sitting area.
She avoided his eyes, her lips wobbling, as if unable to smile back at him.
He and Jessamine each took a chair and I settled on the couch. Jessamine started serving us, unveiling the first dish, and my nauseous stomach rolled out a startling growl, sparking a chuckle from my companions.
Jessamine handed me a plate of fried eggs, sausages, bacon, black pudding and toasted bread. After days of being unable to contemplate the idea of eating, the aromas were so maddeningly delicious it brought back hunger tearing into me. I stuffed a whole sausage in my mouth, earning me a stare from the satyr.
“Sorry,” I mumbled around the food. “I haven’t eaten in days. Actually, weeks.”
His eyes widened, but he thankfully didn’t ask me to explain my weird claim, only said softly, “Then my visit is even more timely than I thought.”
Jessamine offered him a plate, nearly dropping it when their fingers brushed, before breathlessly asking, “Won’t the Master be upset about this?”
