Princess Elodi's Arc

Chapter 3 of 55

The grate needed a tool, and a tool needed time. So Elodi waited. She could not walk to the forge and steal a pry bar in one morning. The guards watched too closely. She would slip out at night, break the bolts in the dark, and be gone before her mother woke. Until then, she prepared. Each day she took a little. She hid bread and dried fruit under her mattress. She folded two blankets tight and pushed them to the bottom of a leather bag. She stole matches from the kitchen and a fat candle from the reading table. From a servant's hook she lifted a dark cloak, plain enough to pass unseen on the road. Opal watched from the windowsill, her jeweled collar catching the light. The little otter seemed to understand. She stayed quiet. On the third night the bag was full. Only one thing was missing. Elodi sat at her desk while the castle slept. The slate towers stood black against the moon outside her window. She dipped her pen and began to write. "Mother," she wrote. "By the time you read this, I will be gone." Her hand shook, but she did not stop. She told the truth. She was eighteen now. She was a woman, not a child. Her mother could not cage her behind guards and locked doors any longer. Fear had built these walls. Elodi understood that fear. She knew her mother still wept for the King. But grief could not become a prison. She wrote that she would come back. She would return when she had seen the world past the outer wall, and she would return whole. Then she wrote the hardest line. "I love you. This is not goodbye." She read it twice and folded the page. Elodi propped the letter against her pillow, where her mother would find it. She looked at the bag by the door, packed and heavy. She looked at the cloak on its hook. Everything was ready. Tomorrow night she would take a hammer from the forge, break the grate, and walk out through the tunnel. The waiting was over. She blew out the candle and lay down in the dark. Opal curled against her side. Elodi did not sleep. She counted the hours until she could leave. Then a floorboard creaked in the hall. A line of lamplight slid under her door. Footsteps stopped outside. The handle turned. Elodi's heart slammed. The letter sat plain on the pillow beside her, and the packed bag waited by the door for anyone to see.