When he and Rose squeezed into the tiny closet, they found Quirk propped up in bed holding a cup of tea.
Griff felt a rush of relief; Rose went to her knees beside the low bed and reached out to hug Quirk. “Oh, you’re awake.” Her elbow knocked the tea, and Griff reached down to take the cup and set it on the floor so it wouldn’t spill. Quirk smiled wanly up at him. It was easy to forget how small Quirk was, because he had such a big personality. But now he seemed strangely fragile.
Rose, still on her knees, gripped his hands. “How’s your fever? You are better, aren’t you? Not completely better, but you’re going to be all right?”
“Yes, Rosie.” Quirk smiled at her.
Rose blinked and then, for some reason, tears welled up in her eyes. “Oh, Quirk,” she said brokenly.
He patted her hand, and she leaned closer to kiss his pale cheek.
“Now, children,” Quirk said, when she drew back again. His face turned serious. “I hope you’ve noticed that we’re in some trouble here.”
“Yes, we know,” Rose answered, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. “Griff is teaching me how to fight.”
“Hm.” Quirk looked speculatively up at Griff, then back at her. “What you really need to do is get away.”
“You’re not well enough to travel,” Rose said to him.
Quirk waved a hand weakly, as if dismissing her worry. “Doesn’t matter. You should go anyway.”
“No,” Griff put in. He leaned a shoulder against the wall, folding his arms.
Both Quirk and Rose looked up at him. “Well, I suppose that’s settled, then,” Quirk said with a wry shake of his head.
“Yes, it is. We won’t leave here without you.” Rose patted Quirk’s arm. “Quirk, you know a lot more about all of this than we do. I think you should tell us what’s going on.”
“Ah. Yes.” Quirk was silent for a few minutes, thinking. “I assume you two and Timothy have realized that Story is at work here.”
“Yes, we have,” Rose said, with a quick glance up at Griff. “It’s a story about me. I’m sort of . . . tangled up in it?”
“Yes,” Quirk said. “Entangled is a good way to describe it.” He turned Rose’s hand, then ran his blunt fingers over the mark on the inside of her wrist. When Griff had seen it before, it had been a burn, but it had healed into a new shape, a softly pink rose in full flower. Seeing it, Quirk nodded, as if he’d expected it. “You were born for this story, Rose. Your curse will force you to play a role in it.”
“I’m not a construct,” Rose interrupted. “I don’t have to be part of this.”
“Rose, when Pen stole you away from here and brought you to Shoe, she was trying to stop the story from happening, but”—he sighed—“Story has a way of overcoming such efforts. It is extremely dangerous.” He was silent for a long moment. “I’m not sure there’s much we can do to fight it.”
“We have to try,” Rose said.
“Yes.” Quirk closed his eyes, weary.
“What can we do?” Rose persisted. “My curse has something to do with a spindle, doesn’t it?”
“The spindle.” Quirk nodded and struggled to open his eyes. “The curse . . . it will draw you to it. If you prick your finger on the spindle, the curse takes effect.”
Rose leaned closer to him. “What will happen?”
Quirk’s eyes dropped closed again. “Sleep,” he murmured. “Everyone in the castle will fall under a sleep spell. Must not happen. Story will triumph.”
Rose patted Quirk’s hand and looked up at Griff. “We’ll have to find out what a spindle looks like.” She climbed to her feet, and they stood looking down at Quirk, who seemed very small and pale in the bed.
Silently, she and Griff stepped out of the room, into the narrow hallway that led to the kitchen.
Rose turned toward him. “Griff?” she said hesitantly.
When Griff spoke, his voice felt rusty. “Yes.”
“Will you . . . ?” A pink flush crept up her cheeks. After an awkward moment, she shook her head. “Nothing. Never mind. I’ll, um, see you tomorrow.”
Griff nodded. “Be careful.”
“I will,” she promised, and left.
CHAPTER
22
I FOUND THAT I’D MADE A MISTAKE NOT KISSING GRIFF when I had the chance in the hallway outside Quirk’s room, because as soon as I closed the door of the sitting room behind me, the Misses pounced on me and pressed me for details about dallying with the handsome stableboy, and I had nothing to tell them.
“Ooh, she’s shy,” Miss Olive said with a titter.
“No, I’m really not,” I protested. “I just couldn’t—”
“Kissing a stableboy is only dalliance,” Miss Amity said condescendingly. “It doesn’t matter. There is no reason for a lady like you, or like us, to feel sensitive about it.”
“That’s right,” Miss Olive confirmed. “It’s not as if we could actually care about someone we were only dallying with.”
“Oh,” I said faintly.
“You can go again tomorrow,” Miss Amity pronounced. “But we expect details.”
“Ooh, yes,” Miss Olive said, and made kissing noises with her lips.
I resigned myself to more of their company as they talked about flirting with the castle’s male courtiers, and practiced coquettish glances on each other. “More eyelashes, Olive,” Amity counseled. “Put your chin down, and don’t show your teeth.” Olive contorted herself until she looked ridiculous, blinking her eyes rapidly, with a close-mouthed smile pasted on her face.
I tried to ignore them, passing the time pacing around the sitting room and worrying about Story, resolutely not thinking about Griff until the afternoon was over and it was time for dinner.
IN THE MORNING, when I’d been laced into yet another insipidly pink dress, Sally and Dolly ushered me to the sitting room. As always, the Misses were there. But no Timothy. She was off practicing with her sword, I guessed, or doing something more interesting, like spying around the castle. I stood in the doorway feeling desperate and trapped. How could I possibly spend another day just sitting around?
Strength, I counseled myself. Will, as Griff had taught me. Anything is a weapon, even patience. Quirk was still too weak to travel. Waiting until he was better was all I could do, for now.
I gritted my teeth as Miss Amity and Miss Olive fluttered gracefully to me, showering me with the same compliments they’d given me the day before, about my dress, and the color of my eyes. “And your new hairstyle!” Miss Amity exclaimed. “It is simply exquisite.”
“No,” I said blankly, pulling away from them so I could sit by myself on the window seat. “It’s exactly the same as it was yesterday.”
Unfazed, they seated themselves and chattered brightly to each other. Their conversation had no substance at all; I listened with half an ear, but it washed past me without making an impression. I looked out the window at the blurred sky and the empty expanse of low hills. I wondered what Griff was doing. Oh, I’d been so awkward when I’d said good-bye to him in the hallway outside Quirk’s sickroom. I wasn’t sure he wanted to kiss me, but I wanted it so much. Today I would do it my way. There would be no blushing, I promised myself, none of the flirtatious glances that Olive and Amity had prescribed.
I was quiet until lunch; when I’d finished eating four of the dainty sandwiches that Sally had brought us, I stood up from the little table and brushed bread crumbs from my skirt. “Well,” I said briskly. “I’m off for my dalliance.”
Olive and Amity broke off their conversation and stared at me for a moment; then they both tittered. “Remember,” Amity said with a coy look. “We expect a full report this time.”
“Yes, of course.” Feeling enormously self-conscious, I went out of the sitting room, sure their whispers about me would begin as soon as the door was closed. Free of them, I hurried down the stairs, out of the castle, and across the courtyard. The air outside was cold, making me shiver and rub the goose bumps from my bare
arms. Stepping carefully over the ice-slicked paving stones, I approached the stable and peered in the door.
The stable was empty.
As I stood there, wondering where Griff was and feeling a little bereft that he wasn’t there to meet me, a warm hand clamped over my mouth, and an arm wrapped around me, roughly pulling me back against a long, hard body.
For just a second I stiffened, and all of Griff’s instructions about what to do if I was attacked flashed through my mind. I raised my arm, preparing to strike. But then I relaxed and slowly turned to face the one who had grabbed me.
It was Griff, of course. He stared at me, wide-eyed, for a long moment. “You were supposed to fight.”
I felt a little breathless; we were standing so close together. “I knew it was you.” I tipped my face up. This was it. He was going to bend his head, and we would kiss.
Then he released me and stepped back. “How?”
“I just did,” I said, and I couldn’t help smiling up at him.
He blinked and moved abruptly past me; I followed him into the stable. Griff was pulling the sheathed knife from his belt.
“Grappling, you said yesterday,” I reminded him.
He glanced at me, and then looked away, shaking his head. “No. Knife work.”
And then he was all intensity and focus again, as he showed me how to hold the knife, how to keep it hidden until I was ready to use it, how to draw it quickly from the sheath and strike fast, without hesitation.
I knew I should be paying attention, but all I could think about was the kiss.
I found myself staring at Griff’s mouth, at his finely cut lips. Every time he touched me, just a meeting of our fingers as he handed me the knife, or a brush of his arm as he showed me a move, my skin felt acutely sensitive. Would his lips against mine feel the same way? Or would it be awkward and strange?
Stop it, I chided myself. Olive and Amity were right, in a way. It was just a kiss. It didn’t have to mean anything. And I needed to focus on more important things, like how we were going to escape from the castle—from Story.
GRIFF SHEATHED THE knife and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his ragged shirt. Rose seemed flustered, on edge. “That’s enough for today,” he told her.
“All right.” She turned and went to the doorway. There she stood looking across the courtyard to the castle without speaking.
Which really wasn’t like her. She probably didn’t feel like talking to him. It was his own fault, he berated himself. He shouldn’t have grabbed her from behind. Surely she thought he was a brute, like the man who’d attacked her.
Working himself up to an apology, he joined her, feeling intensely aware of her, standing so near. She shivered as a breeze gusted in the doorway. The air had grown cooler as clouds had drawn in over the sun; a few pigeons spiraled down to land on the courtyard’s paving stones.
“I don’t want to go back in there,” she said, nodding toward the castle.
Then just stay here, he wanted to say.
“My mother and father are fairly awful,” she went on. “They ignore each other completely, and they seem to barely notice me. Even though they’re part of Story, I still want to love them. But I can’t. They’re too . . .” She shrugged. “They’re too blank.” She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. “Griff,” she said musingly. “Do you miss your father at all?”
“No.”
She turned toward him, leaning against the opposite side of the door. A smile played at the corners of her mouth. “One word,” she teased. “Now you’ve only got nine words left of today’s ration.”
He wasn’t sure how to answer that.
“I can see why you don’t miss him,” she went on, serious again. “He didn’t seem very nice.” Then she was silent, giving him room to respond.
His father. Griff looked down at the toes of his shabby boots. The weight of his father’s disapproval, the depth of his coldness—he’d gotten so used to it. And now that he was free of it . . . “Being away from him is a relief,” he said slowly, realizing as he said it how true it really was. “He’s the Lord Protector first,” he tried to explain.
“And a father not at all,” she finished for him. She waved at the castle. “Like the man in there who is supposed to be my father.”
They were silent for a long moment.
“I wish you could have met Shoe,” she said. Her face brightened. “He was a wonderful father to me.”
“You miss him,” he noted.
“Oh yes, of course. Very much. I loved him. And he loved me.”
The breeze swirled in the stable door, stirring the straw on the floor, and Griff felt its chill on the back of his neck. He wondered what it would be like, to love like that. To be loved. It wasn’t something he’d ever experienced, and he didn’t know how to imagine it.
Across the courtyard, a servant in a blue uniform leaned out the castle’s kitchen door and lit the lantern. It had gotten late, not long until dinner, and the sun was setting behind the heavy clouds.
“They’ll be sending one of my guards to find me soon,” Rose said, straightening. “I’d better go in.”
He nodded, feeling chilled by the thought of the long stretch of time before he’d see her again tomorrow.
Instead of leaving, she turned toward him. “Griff?” she said hesitantly, and then put her hands to her cheeks.
The stable was growing dim with the oncoming night, but it was bright enough to see her face. Was she blushing?
“Can I kiss you?” she asked abruptly, her flush deepening.
His mind went blank. “What?”
“I could only get away by telling the ladies-in-waiting that I was . . .” She paused and huffed out a laugh. “That I was dallying with the new stableboy. That’s you. Dallying is, um, kissing, and I’m supposed to report back to them, and I don’t know what to tell them.” She shrugged, and then went on in a rush. “And if I can’t tell them anything I won’t be able to get away again so you can go on teaching me how to fight. Because I’ve never kissed anyone before.”
“But you were . . .” Attacked, he was going to say.
“Yes, I know,” she anticipated. “But that was awful. That doesn’t count as kissing.” She stepped closer. “So can I?”
Completely at a loss for words, he nodded.
She reached up and put her arms around his neck and pulled his head down. At first it was awkward. He’d never kissed anyone before, either. But her lips were so soft. She smelled so good. His arms went around her, and he drew her closer, close enough that she must be able to feel his heart pounding in his chest.
And for just the briefest flash, he didn’t have that sinking, falling feeling, that certainty that he’d stepped off a precipice and was plunging to an abrupt finish.
With a sigh, she pulled away and looked up at him, lips parted, face glowing. “I should have guessed that you’d be good at this.”
He was? “I don’t know,” he said, his voice rusty. “I think I might need more practice.”
“Oh,” she said breathlessly. “Yes.” She tipped her face up to his, and they kissed again, and she was right. A kiss could be a weapon. He had no defense against it; it left him shaking, and bereft at the thought that it had to end, and she would go away.
But it did end.
Still in the circle of his arms, she touched her lips with her fingertips, smiling a little. “I’d better go,” she said softly. But she didn’t move.
Griff felt like he should say something. All he wanted to do was kiss her again.
Rose took a step away, breaking their embrace. “They’re wrong,” she said, as if speaking to herself.
“Who’s wrong?” he managed to say.
“The ladies-in-waiting,” she answered. “They have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.”
He shook his head, not understanding.
“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll kiss you tomorrow.” Her face went scarlet. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I mean.??
? A last flustered smile, and she was gone.
JUST AFTER ROSE had gone back to the castle, Griff was settling the horses for the night when he heard a quick step at the wide door that led out to the courtyard. Rose, he hoped. Sneaking out so they could spend more time together.
It was Timothy. She carried a lumpy burlap sack, which she dumped on the ground beside the door. “Watcher,” she said with a nod.
I’m not a Watcher anymore, he wanted to say. Instead he brushed past her and picked up the wooden scoop he used to give the horses their nightly ration of oats.
She blew out a breath and watched him cross to the oats bin. “Have you figured out what’s going on here?”
“Yes,” he said briefly, and scooped up some oats. “This is Story’s place. Rose is in danger.”
“Very succinct,” Timothy commented. “But you left something out. We’re all in danger.”
He nodded and carried the scoop of oats across the stable to the horses’ stalls.
“But Rose is the one we really need to worry about,” Timothy admitted.
He paused. “She never belonged to Story.” He searched for words. “She’s honest. And true.” And when she was happy, she glowed with it, like a flame, warming everyone around her. She had glowed that way after their kiss, too.
“Yeah, I know.” Timothy shrugged. “You see the beauty first. It’s hard to see the girl behind it. But she’s there, and she’s not a construct. I’m not going to let Story have her.”
“You’d make a good Watcher,” Griff found himself saying.
“Ugh,” Timothy said, with a mock scowl. “You probably think that’s a compliment.” She flopped down to sit on one of the hay bales. “So can we get Rose out?”
Griff considered it. That morning he had scouted the castle, avoiding the always-watching servants and courtiers. One of the things he’d found was an armory full of weapons that were sharpened, ready. Story’s servants would be well armed if it came to a fight.