Could I move it up and out of bed? Maybe I could sleepwalk it out of here. Maybe the thorns only stopped people from entering, but if I could bypass them, I could walk my body all the way back home, so I could be with my family.
But if they were keeping me here, did that mean they really didn’t want me around? They hadn’t even appointed someone to keep watch over me.
Anger, outrage, helplessness, frustration, and desperation all collided into one long, furious scream that only I heard filling the room.
My body only made a whimpering sound. I mimed a yanking move with all my strength, but it barely moved. I tried again, and again. The most I managed was to make my body move the covers a bit down my torso. I wouldn’t be puppeteering it back to Eglantine any time this century.
“This is hopeless,” I wailed, the echo of my real heart thundering, my no-longer-there lungs choking hoarsely on a phantom breath. “I’m in hell!”
And this was where I’d remain forever.
I stared off into space, probably for days on end.
Other days I watched rain sliding down the windowpanes, like the tear tracks I wished I could still feel running down my face.
The hypnotic rainfall was the only relief I had, the one thing that lulled my churning mind and heaving soul.
Suddenly, I couldn’t even have that anymore.
Something was interrupting the storm’s steady fury. Erratic sounds, like something scratching at stone, chipping away at my daze.
The persistent sounds finally snapped me back to clarity, ears focused. And what I heard had treacherous hope rising in spite of everything.
Those sounds were right outside my window!
Somebody had managed to bypass the thorns, and climb all the way up here.
Someone had finally come for me.
The scratching grew louder, followed by a frustrated groan, and a string of unintelligible curses.
Rooted beside my body in the shadows, anticipation echoed my heartbeat in my throat as I fixed unblinking eyes at the window, praying, “Please, please, please.”
The noises grew louder, then I saw a gloved hand grip the ledge outside the window, pulling up a hooded head into view.
Pulling back his fist, the man smashed the windowpane in a cacophonous crash that made me jerk. Then he heaved himself up and swung inside.
He landed in a fluid crouch, his cloak spread around him like a shadow, water slipping off the green material in fat droplets.
When he stood, I thought he was the best sight I’d ever seen. Tall, and broad, and strong. At last, one of the candidates Leander had sent after me had the persistence and skill to circumvent the curse’s barricade.
He had to be the one!
Now he would approach my body, see how perfect I looked in repose, and he would declare his love. His kiss would wake my body from its deathly slumber, and reclaim my spirit from its hellish exile.
But—he didn’t approach.
His gaze barely touched the shadows where I stood as he massaged his wrists before moving to scan the rest of the room. Then with a shake of his head and a huff, he ran out of the room.
Where was he going?
Stunned disbelief gave way to alarmed pursuit as I whooshed through the door he’d slammed behind him, tailing him down the tower and throughout the decrepit castle.
He stopped at every chamber to search every closet, humming a tune under his breath, one that was familiar, but whose origins eluded me.
What was he doing? Did he think I was being kept in a closet? Was that why he hadn’t even looked around my room, when he’d found none? Was he that dumb he didn’t think to investigate the canopied bed in the far corner, didn’t get the simple concept of “Princess Sleeping in a Tower?”
By the time we reached the second floor, I’d had it with him checking impossible places for me. I floated in his wake, fists clenched, wishing to be solid for only seconds, so I could punch him in his thick head.
Then at the end of one corridor, he let out a triumphant, “Aha!” and rushed through the door bordered by rusting, cobwebbed suits of armor, one with its mace-bearing arm lying at its feet.
Outrage washed over me as I watched him pick up the weapons inside, examining them, muttering reports on their condition and usefulness. Then he produced a folded leather bag from his cloak, and crouched to pack the crossbow he’d selected, followed by an axe and an assortment of daggers.
He wasn’t here for