Amilee did not go to the old woman’s room, appearances none withstanding. Instead, when the hall turned, she went straight… Which meant leaving through the window of her matron’s lost daughter.
It made her smile, not really knowing why, to see the deep scores left in the sill by Eliana’s father. The shattered lock that had never been repaired. The bars of the windows, which still yawned from the places they’d been rent.
It also left a convenient exit. Hopping to the weathered sill with the ease of any nimble child, she found the ancient latticework still intact below it, if held together more by vines than wood. A handful of the thick growths in either, she shimmied down the height of the wall, and within moments her feet found earth.
A delighted, slightly mischievous smile crept across her face. She loved it every time she got away with that. Eliana, assuming she’d report the transgression to her mistress, never noticing as she took her own leave.
The sun was finally setting, and Amilee welcomed it. It had been a long day even for those who could bear the sun, but more importantly, with it set, her true coconspirator could ‘shed’ his heavy robes, or at least one need for them, free of the restraints of day.
He was waiting by the monolithic oak, the sole tree that had survived the city’s making, through sheer stubborn refusal to fall. Her face brightened as she saw him, but he gave little indication that he saw her, other than a slow nod to distract from his thoughtful pose.
And the half-held heir to her father’s crown, now seeks the angel who prowls the city, she informed him easily through their mental link, bowing deeply. And the angel seeks a demon heir, no more than one quarter blood, unless I’m mistaken! Thinking her full demon, no doubt, and male, as an emissary of the gods would hardly be wasted on a woman.
How much is missed now, by the gods who are expected to guard our world? A sprig of straw clasped firmly between his ruby brushed lips first lifted, then dipped, then rolled along the length of his mouth, pressed by his tongue. This was the way he showed annoyance. “And why should it matter to either of us?” He finished aloud, turning now, and heading into the opposite forest, from the one Eliana hunted.
How will this be played, teacher? Amilee fell into step just behind him, draped neatly by his shadow, her eyes an almost frightening gleam of blue in the darkness. For a moment, just a moment, her true power, the birthright her mother had left her, almost shone through. An angel isn’t nearly so neatly rid of as a demon…
