“Alright, alright, I’m going,” he told them irritably. Pulling his pack off his shoulder, he dug around until he found what he was looking for. A grappling hook and rope. He prayed it would be enough to reach her room, then he would have to figure something else out. Securing the hook to the stones under the window, he asked them to please not let it slip. The stones didn’t respond, they just kept pushing him onward. Don’t stop, don’t delay. Danger. Hurry.
Finally starting to feel a little anxious, Clay threw the length of rope out over the wall and began climbing down. He skirted around a darkened window, praying no one was looking outside, and continued until he was next to the one he wanted. Clay thought if the stones had hands, they would have shoved him inside. He’d never heard such a clamor from rock before.
Perching on the windowsill, he took in the room. There was the princess, standing in front of her door and everything about her body language spoke of terror. He climbed in, unsure of what to do next. The plan had been to come in on her sleeping but the stone wouldn’t allow him to delay for a moment longer.
She whirled to face him and his mouth went dry. Clay knew she was beautiful from the short glimpse he’d gotten the day before, but he was not prepared for what he would feel seeing her face to face.
Her eyes were bright with emotion, glinting like emeralds in the sun. The color had risen in her cheeks and her breast was heaving with her quickened breathing. This princess was absolutely captivating and something about her left him feeling completely off balance.
He opened his mouth to speak and the dumbest thing he could ever say in this situation escaped his lips. “Hi, I’m here to kidnap you.”
Escape
She stared at him in shock. Behind him, Clay heard a distant clang and then a louder one. He turned around and saw that the grappling hook had fallen from the top floor and was caught in this window. Taking a moment to thank the stones and still amazed that they were being so helpful, he turned back to face her. The princess was barreling straight for him. She stopped at the window, looked over her shoulder at him and said, “What are you waiting for? Kidnap me! Quickly!”
She clung to his back as he rappelled down the castle wall. With her added weight, the descent was not easy. More than once Clay’s grip slipped on the rope and they slid for a short distance before he could grasp it again. His palms were raw and stinging from the rope burn but she never made a sound. Clay could hear her frantic breathing in his ear. The girl was terrified but not of him and not of potentially falling to her death. She was terrified of what she had left behind in the castle.
Once they hit the ground, the princess let go and moved a few paces away. Clay gave a sharp tug on the rope, asking the stones for one last favor, and they complied. The hook landed neatly at his feet and he gathered it up along with the rope, tucking it all back in his pack.
“We have to run,” she said, calmly. She was all regal grace now, despite the fact that he could still feel the panic coming off of her in waves. “We have to go, right now, or they’ll find us.”
Without waiting for him to follow, she gathered her skirts and sprinted toward the forest. Clay watched her for a moment, struck by how impossible it seemed that the person he had come to kidnap actually wanted to be taken and then, snapping himself out of his reverie, jogged to catch up.
Clay ran with her into the forest and watched her from the corner of his eye. The woman looking around in wonder as if she’d never seen a tree before. Every once in a while, she would stretch her hand out and lightly touch a trunk as they passed by. Once she even stopped to bend down and smell a leaf from a low hanging branch. When it looked like she was about to pull the leaf from the tree, he stopped her.
“Don’t,” Clay said softly. “You’ll hurt it. Don’t you know that?”
She stared at him in silence, inspecting him closely for the first time, those tilted green eyes searching his soul. Stepping forward slowly, as if she was approaching a deer and didn’t want to startle it, she got close to him and put a hand on his chest and then snatched it away.
“Who are you? Why were you going to kidnap me?” she demanded in a tone that could only be delivered by a genuine princess.
Clay didn’t care for being commanded by someone who didn’t rule him and thought about giving her a cheeky response just to irk her but decided that half the truth would be annoying enough.
“I don’t know,” he told her plainly. “But I did, and here we are.” That was all this haughty royal was going to get from him until she learned how to address him politely, so Clay spun on his heel and continued to the heart of the forest. After a moment, he could hear her following him. Her steps were light and quick but the fact that he could hear them at all told of her human side. He slowed his pace until she caught up and they walked in silence.
* * *
Lana was feeling so many emotions she didn’t even know how to begin to make sense of them. She was free and that made her feel exuberant. She was hunted and
