The Art of Courts and Lies (Book 1 in The Gifted Trilogy)

20- When the Darkness Comes

"Wren" a hushed voice broke through the peaceful silence of my room, ripping me from sleep to the present. The intruder's hand was closed over my shoulder in a firm yet still gentle type of way.

I blinked my bleary eyes as I took in my surroundings. It was completely dark besides a single lit candle on my bed stand that barely illuminated the dark shape of the figure in front of me.

"Wren, we have to get out of here" the voice continued in an urgent whisper. The voice sounded the way I would assume midnight would sound if it had a voice: a quiet sort of serenity that hid a whole world of secrets right below its surface.

And I knew that midnight voice as well as if it was my own.

I felt my chest tighten painfully as I lurched forward and grabbed the shadow in front of me. They let out a short bark of protest but I didn't stop moving until I had them in front of the single lit candle that illuminated their face.

The brown eyes that met mine made the world around me collapse in on itself.

"Porter!" I exclaimed in a voice so desperate and broken I wouldn't have recognized it if I didn't know it had come for me. My hands immediately move to his face looking for signs that it was him. It was really him. He was him.

His lips curved upwards as he whispered, "good to see you again, troublemaker."

An animalistic cry of relief escaped my lips as I threw my arms around my best friend who was somehow standing in front of me. He smelled exactly as I remembered; mulch, wintergreen from the leaves he always chewed, and a slight tinge of sweat that signaled a hard day's work.

The feeling of his warm and familiar chest on my head overwhelms me and before I can stop them, tears are sliding down my face as I begin shaking.

"Easy there fat bird" he chuckled softly, wrapping his arms tightly around me. I let out a burst of laughter. Whenever I had started to call Tessa "little bird" Porter had discovered that a Wren was a type of bird that was typically fat. Ever since then he'd called me that whenever he wanted to be excessively annoying.

But now the nickname brought me a surge of insurmountable happiness.

"How did you find me?" I whispered into his shirt now stained with my tears.

"I'll always find you Wren" he whispered into my hair, running a hand through it like he used to when I pestured him to do so for long enough. "It's going to take more than a few arrogant royal brats to keep me away from you."

I stepped away from his embrace as a question dawned on me. "Tessa-"

"-She's fine" he replied quickly. "She's hiding in an abandoned storage unit a few towns down, waiting for us. We're breaking out of here."

"Porter, there are guards everywhere. How did you even get in here?" I asked, both curious as to how Porter was able to pull off his break in and irritated that I hadn't found a way out of here myself.

"I have my ways" he replied, his signature wink following the vague answer. "Now come on. We need to be clear of this place before the sun goes up."

I nodded and quickly slipped on a pair of boots before shrugging an overcoat over my shirt. We moved towards the door and silently slipped out into the hall. I felt a tinge of guilt when I looked at Briar's door, but at the impatient tug Porter gave my shirt, I knew we didn't have enough time to break her out too. I made a silent promise that I'd come back for her.

As we reached the end of the halls I was surprised to find that the usual guards weren't there. I opened my mouth to ask Porter about it but with a signal from him to stay silent, I swallowed my question.