Dorian Wraith's Arc

Chapter 12 of 27

While Dorian slept in the cabin, Beak flew east alone. The wind pushed against his wings and he pushed back. By midday the black castle rose out of the plain, obsidian walls and steel gates, twin stone warriors flanking the door. Beak climbed higher, cleared the wall, and dropped into a courtyard on the far side. He landed behind a water barrel and spoke the shrinking word under his breath. His body pulled inward until he was the size of a fly. His wings shrank with him. He lifted off and slipped through a crack under a kitchen door. He spent hours listening. He rode the shoulder of a cook who complained about extra bread going down to the cells. He hid in the hem of a maid who whispered to another maid that the prince would not eat. He clung to a beam above two guards on a stair. One guard said the king had given the boy a choice and the boy had said no. The other said the king had put him in the deep cells for it, that the prince would not renounce the witch, that he'd rather rot than lie. Beak had what he needed. He flew down the stair, past torches, past a locked grate he slipped through sideways. The air grew cold. He heard breathing behind the last door on the left. Beak squeezed under the door and grew back to his full size in the dark. Prince Evander sat with his shirt off against the far wall, wrists chained, one eye swollen shut. He flinched at the pink hair and the wide wings, then knew him. "You," Evander said. Beak knelt at the bars from the inside and set his hand flat on the lock. "I kissed him," Beak said. "He told me no and I didn't listen. That is why you ran. That is why you are here. I am sorry." Evander did not answer. Beak pulled a thin iron pick from his ivy belt and worked the cell lock until it clicked. He opened the wrist chains next. Evander stood, unsteady, one hand braced on the wall. "Dorian?" he said. "Alive," Beak said. "Hurt. Waiting." Evander nodded once. Beak put a hand on Evander’s bare chest. In a flash of light Evander was healed. Above them, boots crossed a floor, then crossed it again, closer. A bell began to ring somewhere in the keep. The cell stood open behind them, and the stair up was the only way out.