Even if I have to remind her of that fact ratherfirmly. I’ll make sure the punishment is something she never forgets…
Her footsteps are almost upon me now. I can hear her slightly labored breathing; she’s been exerting herself, probably working up the courage for this escape attempt.
My brave, foolish little consort.
The divine light in my chest pulses brighter as I prepare to sweep her into my arms and carry her back to safety, back to where she belongs.
She’ll probably fight me at first, but once I explain how dangerous the world beyond these walls truly is, surely she’ll understand. I’ll make her understand.
After all, everything I do is to protect what’s precious to me.
And she—stubborn, beautiful, impossibly brave—is the most precious thing I’ve ever possessed.
FIFTEEN
HANNAH
God,I’m still amazed at these new legs and what feels like a new body, even if it still looks like the old one from the outside.
And my balance!
It’s bananas that I’m flying down these stairs without even holding onto a banister.
It’s a miracle, even if in the end it comes from a most decidedly unholy source. Even though I’m running stairs, something that’s been historically a dangerous activity for me, I start going faster.
Pumping my arms, I glory in the icy wind gust from the completely open windows against my sweat-slicked body.
We’re really going to have to do something about this no-clothes situation if I’m gonna stay much longer… And if I’m ever going to face that snow outside for very long, if I try to escape...
I bite my lip and run harder.
At least the stones underfoot are well-worn and smooth under my bare feet. And now, on my second time down thestairs, my internal temperature has warmed me enough that I don’t feel like I’m freezing anymore. For once.
Where on Earthisthis castle, anyway? If, by some miracle, I do make it out, how will I even begin to get home? Either way, the first step is endurance. Hence, running stairs.
I’m almost down to the ground floor again. I can tell because even though I can’t see far down because of the staircase’s tight spiral, I’ve started counting windows, and this is the last one before the stairs continue underground.
I shudder to think of what lives down there.
I jog down the last few stairs, about to turn around in the only area where the stairwell widens slightly at the ground-floor foyer, before the stairs continue on into the dark shadows below.
Just as I slow?—
The shadows suddenly come alive.
Some hugethingleaps at me, and I scream my head off.
“Beast!” I fling my arms up over my head as my life flashes before my eyes. “Save me!”
Abruptly, like being yanked back by invisible strings, the attacking shadow stops.
Whereas before I only saw it from the corner of my eye, now I look at it full on.
And see that it’shim. He pulls back, looking confused, retracting his extended claws.
I stand up straight. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I yell at him. “You just scared the shit out of me!” I’m livid. What the actual hell?
He’s silent for a moment, as if taken aback by my anger, but it passes quickly enough. “What am I doing?” he asks sarcastically, something I haven’t been sure he is capable of. In fact, the more we’ve communicated, the more eloquent his speech has become, as if he simply has to remind himself of human speech patterns after a long spell of not speaking.
