Chapter 10: The Escape

The days after the nightmare blurred together like watercolors left out in the rain. I stopped counting the hours, stopped trying to track the sun through the frost-covered window, and stopped caring about anything except the slow, steady rhythm of survival.

The servants came and went with trays of food. The fire burned and died and was relit. The nobles laughed outside my door, and Ramiro's name floated through the walls like smoke, and I sat against the headboard and waited.

But I was not just waiting anymore.

I was watching.

The guards changed shifts every six hours. I had counted the intervals, marked the patterns, and memorized the way their boots echoed on the stone floor as they walked past my door. There were two guards in the morning, three at noon, two at dusk, and four at midnight, when the castle was darkest and the cold seeped through the walls like a living thing.

The hidden room had a window. It was too small to climb through, yes, but large enough to drop a rope. If I had a rope, which I did not. But I had the bedsheets, and I had been tearing them into strips for days, and hiding them beneath the mattress where no one would look.

My fingers had blistered from tearing the sheets night after night, but I did not stop. I could not stop. Each strip of fabric was a step toward freedom, and I had measured the distance from the window to the ground a dozen times, calculating how many strips I would need. The knots were tight, tested and retested until my hands cramped. If the rope broke, I would fall. And if I fell, I would die. But staying meant dying too, just slower.

I did not know if the plan would work, and I did not know if I would survive the fall, or the cold, or the wolves that hunted the frozen wasteland beyond the castle walls. But I knew I could not stay here. I could not keep sitting against this headboard, waiting for Ramiro to destroy the king, and waiting for the court to tear me apart, or waiting to die.

If I was going to die, I would die trying to live.

The guards changed at midnight. Four of them, with their boots heavy on the stone floor, and their voices low as they exchanged words I could not hear. I waited until their footsteps faded, until the hallway was silent, and until the only sound was the crackling of the fire and the howl of the wind outside.

Then I moved.

I slipped out of bed and crossed to the hidden door, with my bare feet silent on the cold stone floor. The door swung open without a sound, just as it had before, and I stepped into the small room beyond. The cold hit me immediately, sharper than a blade, and I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered.

The window was high on the wall, too high to reach, but I had planned for that. I dragged the small wooden chest from the corner of the hidden room and positioned it beneath the window. The wood groaned under my weight as I climbed onto it, but it held, and I reached up and pushed against the window frame.

It did not move.

I pushed harder, with my fingers slipping on the frozen wood, and my breath coming in short, sharp gasps. The cold bit into my skin, and my arms screamed with the effort, and for a moment I thought it would not open, thought I would be trapped here, and I thought I would have to climb down and pretend I had never tried.

Then the window gave way.

It swung open with a groan that seemed too loud in the silence, and a rush of frozen air hit my face, stealing my breath and making my eyes water. I looked down at the drop below, at the snow-covered courtyard, and at the walls that had been my prison for weeks.

I did not hesitate or look back for even a second.

I grabbed the rope of torn bedsheets and tied it to the window frame, testing the knot twice, and three times, until I was sure it would hold. Then I climbed through the window and lowered myself into the darkness.

The cold was worse than I had imagined. It bit through my thin shirt like teeth, tore at my skin like claws, and wrapped around my chest like a vice that would not let go. My fingers were numb on the rope, and my arms were shaking, and the snow below looked so far away.

But I kept going. With hand over hand, and foot against the cold stone wall, I lowered myself down, down, down, until my feet hit the snow and I let go of the rope and fell the last few feet.

The snow was deep, up to my knees, and the cold seeped through my trousers and into my skin. I lay there for a moment, catching my breath, feeling the snow melt against my face, and listening to the silence of the frozen night.

Then I stood up, and ran.

The snow was deeper than I had expected, pulling at my legs like hands reaching up from the ground. Each step was a battle, and each battle left me more exhausted than the last. My bare feet had gone numb long ago, and I did not know if that was a blessing or a curse. The wind screamed in my ears, loud enough that I almost missed the sound of my own heartbeat. I tasted blood in my mouth, felt ice forming in my hair, and still I ran. I could not stop, because stopping meant dying.

I did not know where I was going, and I did not know which direction led to safety, or if safety even existed. I just ran, with my legs pumping through the deep snow, my breath coming in ragged gasps, and my heart pounding in my chest like a drum.

The castle walls loomed behind me, dark and massive against the grey sky. The snow stretched out before me, white and endless and empty, and the wind howled in my ears, drowning out the sound of my own footsteps, as the cold burned in my lungs with every breath.

I ran until my legs screamed and my lungs burned and my vision blurred at the edges. I ran until I could not feel my fingers or my toes or my face. I ran until the castle was just a dark smudge on the horizon and the trees ahead of me were close enough to touch.

Finally, I got it to the tree line.

I had made it.

I stumbled into the shadow of the first tree, with my legs giving out beneath me, and I collapsed against the trunk, gasping for air, and shaking with cold and fear and something else that felt like hope.

I had made it, and i was free.

I began to laugh, cry and shake in excitement, because I had done something anyone would think was impossible.

For one brief, beautiful moment, I believed I had won. I leaned my head back against the tree and let out a breath that turned to mist in the cold air. My body was shaking, and my teeth were chattering, and I could not feel my fingers anymore, but I did not care. I was free. I was actually free. Then the feeling came. That prickle on the back of my neck, that weight in the air, and that sense of being watched that I had learned to recognize over the past weeks. My heart stopped. I spun around, and there he was.

Leandro was standing in the snow, less than ten feet away, wearing a black coat that blended into the shadows of the trees. His golden eyes were fixed on me, burning in the darkness, and his face was unreadable.

I had not heard him approach, and I had not seen him follow me. But he was here, and he had been here before me, waiting, watching, like he had known exactly where I would run to.

"Did you think I would not feel you leave?" he asked.

His voice was low and rough, and there was something in it that I had not heard before. It was not anger, or cruelty. It was something else that sounded like pain.

I blinked multiple times as if it would make him disappear or become unreal. I pressed my back against the tree trunk and tried to make myself small, tried to disappear, and tried to find the words that would make him let me go. But my throat was dry, and my lips were frozen, and all I could do was stare at him and shake.

He held out his hand towards me, but I only stared at him, still in shock.

The snow fell between us, soft and silent, landing on his palm and melting against his skin. His golden eyes did not leave mine, and his hand did not waver, and he stood there in the darkness like a statue carved from ice and shadow.

I did not take his hand.

I should have run. I should have pushed myself off the tree and disappeared into the forest and let the snow cover my tracks. I should have done anything except sit there, frozen, staring at the monster who had come to drag me back to my cage.

But I did not run.

I just sat there, with my back against the tree and my heart in my throat, and I looked at his outstretched hand and I thought about the honey he had left by my door, and the tea that was still warm, and the way he had looked at me like I was something worth saving.

I still did not take his hand, but I did not run either.