“What in the bloody waters does that mean?” another deeper voice said, this one right outside my window.
A male voice.
Spirits below, someone was close. That meant... someone was climbing to my tower. Breaking into my tower.
I froze, unsure what to do. What if this was the same person who’d come after Gran and now they were here for me?
A weapon. I needed a weapon. If someone was attempting to invademy home, I’d defend it and myself. I ran to get my knife, realizing that I should’ve already had it on me. I needed a weapon. Of course I did.
Suddenly, the enormity of it all sank onto my shoulders. There was so much I felt unprepared for. First, I’d been about to throw the rope out the window without tying it. Then I’d been about to leave without a weapon on me.
The voices spoke again.
“The beanstalk isn’t going to hold much longer!” the person from far below shouted. “It’s too much magic!”
I straightened my shoulders. No time for doubts. Not when I had an intruder to get rid of. I tiptoed toward the window, knife pointed out. I inched closer, then slowly stuck my head out the opening, eyes roaming for the threat. My braid fell over my shoulder, hanging down. The fog cloaked my view of the ground, but when my gaze veered over I spotted a large hand coming straight at me. Probably for my throat.
I stuck out my knife just as the hand tugged on my long braid and yanked me right out the window.
Chapter Five
LOCHLAN
The beanstalk Driscoll grew for me to climb fell away right as I reached for the short brown rope hanging from the window. My hand latched onto it, and I swung my other arm to reach up and grip onto the ledge.
That’s when a scream rent the air, and suddenly my vision was a blur of black feathers and brown hair and pale skin. A body flew past me out the window, a hand grappling for the ledge and clasping it tight.
“Let go of my hair,” a female voice snapped.
Melodic, sweet, like music to my ears.
My brain finally caught up with the frenzy of activity, and I looked down to realize that I hadn’t grabbed onto a rope at all—it was hair. Her hair.
I let go of it, hand reaching for the ledge, muscles bunching as I tightened my hold.
Driscoll shouted up from below. “What’s going on?”
“Well, I’m currently fighting for my life,” I shouted back. “Thanks for asking.”
“Don’t let go!” he yelled back. “You’ll go splat like a bug.”
Thanks, Driscoll.
“What is wrong with you?” Leoni shouted. “He doesn’t need to hear that right now.”
“Who is that? Who are you?” the woman beside me hissed as she also clutched onto the ledge, her knuckles white, all the color drained from her face, that braid of hers whipping undone, long hair streaming out behind her. Her voice was frantic, her legs kicking wildly.
The wind roared in my ears, everything a blanket of milky-white fog.
It was her. Bloody waters. After months of dreaming about her, she was here, in the flesh. Beautiful with round green eyes, a small pointed nose, those adorable freckles?—
“Are you mute?” Her words ripped me back to reality, both of us struggling as the wind threatened to whip us from this ledge and to our deaths.
“Splat like a bug.”
Great. Now I couldn’t stop picturing myself flattened on the ground below. I could just hear the gossip already. What an uproar that would cause. The headlines wrote themselves.
The famous playboy prince falls to his death like an idiot.