Page 5

Still,she thought, picking at the skirt of a nearby dress that looked as wide as a tent. It was a lot of fabric. Good quality too. Thickly woven.

Taly smiled as an idea began to form.The doors and windows were locked, but there had been a terrace. From what she could tell, she had been put in one of the palace towers. It was a long way down, but still… that was something she could work with.

Running her fingers along sleeves and ruffles of silk and lace, she picked up a pair of shears that she found tucked in a sewing basket along the way. Then, choosing a random gown, she began cutting the jeweled satin into strips.

When she’d reduced the dress to nothing but ribbons, she grabbed another, then another. She braided the delicate fabric, tied the woven cords end-to-end until she had the beginnings of a rope that she felt confident would hold her weight.

Never thought I’d be here, she thought as she ripped another dress off the rack. Granted, she had read her fair share of stories about princesses trapped in tall towers. Both fey and mortal alike had a strange fascination with locking their women up at high altitudes. But she’d never expected to find herself stuck in an actual tower, imprisoned by an evil queen.

But then again, her life had taken a lot of strange twists lately, so she kept cutting and ripping and weaving until she was surrounded by the decimated remains of dresses that, thoughlovely, would go on to serve a far better purpose than accompanying some snobby fey noblewoman to some equally pretentious ball.

Inspecting her makeshift rope, Taly jerked her head. “This’ll have to do,” she said, and stood, tugging off her nightdress as she set off in search of boots, pants, anything that didn’t have ruffles or lace. There was a flicker to her right, and she jumped, fumbling for the shears, for any kind of weapon, only to… stop.

And for a moment, she forgot about escaping from towers and evil queens as she turned to face the woman standing only a scant few feet away.

“Shards…” Taly whispered, slightly dazed when the woman’s lips moved in time with hers. She had known she looked different, had seen her reflection at the river’s edge. But here, in the light of day, utterly naked with nothing to hide behind…

A stranger. She hadn’t been prepared to see a stranger staring back at her from beyond the glass.

Lifting a hand, Taly traced the unfamiliar arch of her ear, then pulled at the skin of her face, trying to find something, some piece of her old self, that had escaped the transformation unscathed.

The color of her hair, the shape of her chin—those were still the same. And, maybe… yes—her nose was still just a little too long, and there was a bump on the bridge from when she’d fallen down the stairs as a child.

But everything else…

Her skin had turned a few shades paler, and her body, though curved in all the ways that a woman’s body should be curved, looked thinner. Prominent cheekbones, brows that arched in away that was decidedly inhuman, and her eyes… No longer a human gray, her eyes were the color of storm clouds and smoke, steel and steam. In the dim light of the closet, they nearly glowed.

Taly took a breath—in and then out.Clothes, she reminded herself. She needed some real clothes, something a little sturdier than a nightdress or a ballgown.

Muttering a truly foul string of curses and feeling slightly better for it, she turned away from that beautiful, alien creature and began rifling through a large dresser set against the wall. There were drawers of lacy underwear, nightgowns as delicate as cobwebs, and more jewels than she had ever seen in a single collection.

After several minutes of frenzied exploration, she opened a drawer and smiled. “Finally.” Simple, sturdy clothing—perfect for traveling.

She shimmied on a pair of leggings, shrugged on a shirt—both black—and then dug through the racks and racks of fine clothing until she found a lightweight, leather coat. Everything fit like it had been made for her, but she didn’t let herself think too hard on that fact.

Since she hadn’t found any weapons, she tucked the sewing shears into a pair of boots that were still too new to be comfortable and fastened her hair into a bun using jeweled pins that looked sharp enough to sting if it came down to a brawl. Then, grabbing her makeshift rope, she made her way back to the terrace.

There were two doors leading to a wide stone patio that wrapped around the whole of the tower. Each was ornately carved, inset with a long oval of leaded glass, and both were unlocked.

Probably because it was well over 300 hundred feet to the ground and jumping off the side of a tower was an objectively terrible idea.

Oh well.

A veil of that same warding magic surrounded the terrace, and it dimmed the sun, casting the entire area in shadow. Taly smirked a bit as she ghosted a hand across the slight shimmer that fell just inside the gray stone railing. Now that she was outside, that was an easy problem to fix.

Pulling the scissors, Taly crouched, levering up a loose stone. Rows of silver wiring ran underneath, and a few snips were all it took to have that veil dissolving, letting in the unfiltered light of day.

The sun was near blinding, and she flinched back into the shadows, holding up a hand.

Fey senses for this new fey body, and Shards, it was like she’d been living her entire life with a bag over her head—one that had suddenly been ripped away. Everything was too loud, too bright. Blue was nowblue, and red wasred. A balmy, summer breeze caressed her skin, bringing with it the smell of jasmine and freshly cut grass—the smell was so strong, it almost made her choke.

Breathing through her mouth, Taly forced her eyes open. The sky stretched out around her, and the gardens surrounding the palace were in full bloom, speckled with bright bursts of color. It chafed against her senses and made her head ache, but she staggered to her feet. She needed to hurry. There was no way to know when someone would come to check on her, and she needed to get into place.

Keeping her head down, she tied one end of the rope to the railing, letting the other dangleover the edge. And then instead of throwing herself off the side of a tower to what would most certainly be her death, she retreated back inside. This was the part where the princesses always got it wrong. Because the point of making a rope out of something like bedsheets or, in her case, dresses, wasn’t about escaping. It was about making your captor believe you had.

Taly hurried to the front room, to the door that would open when someone came to see if she was awake.

Which she was, and she made sure they knew it by knocking and rattling the handle. The warding magic snapped against her skin, like a thousand tiny ants all stinging at once, but she ignored it. Her hands were still tingling as she slipped behind one of the heavy velvet curtains.