Luminous

84 - The Rescue

Arinel pushed herself up on wobbling knees, feet struggling to find purchase on the slippery stone.

"Looks like I'm going to Hyacinth, then." She whispered.

She felt the cold of Father's stare on her back as she toddled numbly towards the door, hardly believing what she had meant to do. Crossing a desert. Defying her father. For the sake of a peasant girl—a Greeneye—her best friend.

"One step out of that door, and you are no longer my daughter."

Father warned, cold and sharp as a blade against her neck. Arinel froze with her hand on the doorknob. Fear crept back in, tugging at her dress, yearning for what was familiar, for compromise. Until a realization dawned upon her, a flash of light bright as a snow glare, burning away the mist, leaving only clarity.

If one step out of the line was all it would take, then was it that much to lose?

The door opened with barely a hitch, closed on the only life she had known with barely a whisper. The stones on the other side felt no different under the soles of her shoes, save for the grim knowledge that there was no going back. A feather-light step, a fine line that took seventeen years to cross, and her new life had begun. Lady Crosset no longer existed. She was no-one. And she could be anyone.

After a few deep breaths, Arinel shook herself out of her reverie and eked out a couple more stiff steps. As she approached the alley at the corner of Father's room, a Jaise guard stepped out of the shadows and slipped down his mask.

His hair remained hidden under the hood of his cloak, but Arinel would never not recognize those glowing green eyes, that scar-ridden face, that cold, menacing smile.

"Lady Crosset." said Gillian the Dragon. His smiled widened, "I believe you're in want of rapid transport across the Sands?"

⏳

(The present)

Meya's successful escape came to light soon after the Hadrians had sneaked Arinel back to their guest quarters, when a guard climbed up to refill the prisoners' water bowls. Enraged at the affront to her infallible prisons, Lady Amoriah commanded her guards to tear the Hyacinth Palace apart in search of her fugitive.

As they waited for sundown, Arinel explained to her de jure in-laws how Father had come to learn of the switch and ordered Meya's arrest—how Gillian and his twenty men had flown her and Jerald across the desert as dragons—how they had smuggled Meya out in Arinel's clothes and a blonde wig, while she stayed behind with the ransom demand. She also had to recount the ambush in the forest—her deal with Meya—

She stopped short of revealing her affair with Zier, however—when guards came knocking to conduct a search, Coris sprang up and dragged her to the bed. In the precious seconds he had while he helped her crawl under it, he warned in a whisper that his parents knew the truth, but Zier hadn't confessed, before climbing onto the bed himself to feign sleep.

This happened twice more while Coris's parents bombarded her with questions, hoping to know her better, before the Baroness welcomed Arinel as her ward and maid-of-honor.

Arinel was reduced to tears. Of course, the true family she lost could never be replaced, but she had found a new one to shelter her as she weathered the storm, and figured out which path to take. The Baroness held her as she sobbed, and Arinel felt a mother's embrace for the first time in her life.

The last knocks came on the eve of sunset—servants had brought them a light dinner of goat milk and dates (Lady Hyacinth having upended the feast table as the culminating act of her tantrum). They downed the milk, pocketed the dates, then crept through the mostly deserted hallways and up one of the towers under the pretense of stargazing. The Baroness reluctantly stayed behind—they have limited seats on their transport. They also needed to leave someone to deflect suspicion, and protect the remaining members of the entourage.