Page 61 of The Faerie Handmaid

“What are you doing, then?”

“I am asking the Lady to strengthen my magic.”

Gwen gasped and exclaimed, “Braithe! You have magic?”

Braithe put up a hand, as she had seen Morgana do so many times. “Forgive me, Gwen,” she said softly. “I need silence.” In a low voice, she spoke the stanza that had sprung to mind:

The fledgling trembles on the edge of the nest,

Eager to fly, afraid to fall.

The darkness finds her lingering still.

She did not dare wait for darkness. She bowed her head and asked the Lady for her help.

The answering words sounded as clearly and tenderly as birdsong: I am always with you, my child.

Braithe drew a long breath, clasped her hands before her, and pronounced the cantrip:

Skin and bone and belly and blood

Belly and blood and skin and bone

Master spell is now undone.

There was no way to tell if it had worked. She didn’t even know if Faolin had applied the same cantrip to this block that he had to the front door and the gate. Fear made her hesitate, the dread of pain even worse than that she had already suffered.

The front door clicked and swung open. Gwen hissed, “Braithe! He’s back!”

Braithe dared not wait any longer. She took a breath, held it, and plunged through the entrance to the workroom.

There was no pain. There was only elation, not only that she had gotten in, but that her magic—with the Lady’s help—had been sufficient. “Gwen!” she called. “Come with me!”

But Gwen cried, “No, no! He’ll kill us!”

Braithe heard Faolin’s voice in the hall, but she ignored it. She shoved at the window sash, but it wouldn’t budge. In a desperate hurry, she seized up a pottery jar from the worktable and flung it through the glass, which shattered in a satisfying fashion. Hastily, pushing shards of glass out of her way as best she could, she climbed through, glad for once to be small. She was vaguely aware that her hands had sustained cuts and were bleeding freely, but that didn’t matter. She leaped down into the sparse shrubbery and raced to the garden gate, repeating the cantrip as she ran. The gate swung obediently open just as she reached it. She left it that way and pounded through, on down the street, fleeing toward the boulevard as fast as she could run. She was young and strong, and propelled by newly strengthened magic.

Faolin didn’t attempt the window. He shouted after her from the open gate, but he was much older than she was and worn down by depravity and hate. He didn’t attempt pursuit, and in moments she could no longer hear his threats and curses. When she reached the boulevard, she let her intuition guide her to the east, still running at her top speed. She felt as fleet as any deer, as surefooted as a fox.

She was free.

20

Braithe ran until her legs threatened to give out at such a pace. Then, breathing hard, she walked. She concentrated on getting away from the city, finding a place to hide that would be beyond Faolin’s reach. It horrified her to think of Gwen bearing the brunt of Faolin’s fury, but there had been no time for trying to persuade her to leave. Braithe swore to herself she would enlist the help of Morgana and the councillor to free Gwen from Faolin’s prison. For now, she had to keep herself safe. She couldn’t help Gwen if she didn’t make good her own escape.

She reached the eastern outskirts of the city just as the floating lights began to glimmer along the streets. It was easy to keep to the shadows. A few servants moved in the distance, carrying trays to and from the communal kitchen, but she saw no one else. The road grew narrower, then rougher, finally diminishing until it was no more than a packed dirt lane, and she began to relax.

She didn’t know where she was, or even where she might be going, but she was out of the White City, and that was what mattered. Her instinct drew her on.

Dusk gathered under the trees and beneath the shrubs crowding the lane, but in the distance a glow peeked through the woods, a faint but steady light. Could that be a house, out here in the countryside? It was too far off for her to tell. As she walked, the light often disappeared behind the stands of trees, making her wonder if she was imagining it.

Real or not, it gave her a goal. She pushed on toward it, or where she thought it was, as the night pressed down around her. She had never been alone in the midnight woods, and her nerves jumped at unfamiliar noises coming from the darkness. She kept moving, scanning the shadowed forest for places she could hide if she needed to. She could duck behind one of the trees, she supposed, or crouch down in the brush. Taking comfort in the thought, she drove herself forward, watching the woods for a glimpse of the elusive light.

She found a brook running alongside the lane and paused to dip up water and sip it from her hands. She remembered with longing the food she had not touched, but her mind veered away. There would be no food this night, so there was no point in thinking about it. The air remained warm, which was an advantage. She didn’t relish the idea of a night in the open, but she wouldn’t freeze. It was infinitely better to contemplate sleeping rough than suffering further torment in Faolin’s nightmare house.

The lane narrowed and shrank even more, until it was nothing but an untended path. She knew she was still in fae country, but the contrast with the overmanicured boulevards and lanes of the city was dramatic. As the darkness thickened, she stumbled often on rocks and ruts. The more tired she got, the more uncertain her steps were. Her legs began to shake, and her feet burned from trying to find purchase on the uneven ground.

She stopped once to crouch down until her legs recovered. In the stillness, the familiar twitter of night birds comforted her. A fox barked in the distance, and that was also reassuring. She was Morgana’s handmaid, connected to all nature’s creatures. Perhaps she would rather not encounter a wolf or a boar, but she had nothing to fear from a fox.