The dancing went on for a good while into the night, the melodies flowing from slow and soft, to quick and bold. For four dances Ambrose and Ellanor had danced, before the former had to return to his wife to check on her. Ellanor had not minded the break, feeling rather dizzy herself, but she had only so much as turned from Ambrose to find some friend of Lourelle’s mid bow, asking for the next dance.

Ellanor had spent the rest of the ball dancing with what seemed to her to be half the attendees, men and women alike. At first she had been trying to find a good moment to excuse herself – a break during which she could ask Jane to find out where Lukas and Dalton had gone – but when Kirsty had gotten up from her seat and asked the quintette to play a Casan folk song, Ellanor had put her efforts on pause you join the pregnant woman in the dance. After that she was too distracted by her friends to not enjoy the ball.

At some time Dalton had returned to the great room, seeming to Ellanor like nothing in particular had happened when he was away. Still, there had been something about his posture when he spoke to people, some tension in his face that had made Ellanor’s stomach curl up in knots. It had not lessened when she had spotted Lukas talking to Jane, in between the twirls of the dance then currently in motion. Lukas’s face had been just as hard as when she had last seen him, and Jane’s eyes had been lit with unusual worry. None of them had looked Ellanor’s way, and when the dance finally had come to a close only Jane had been left, the worry vanished from her face.

The clock struck two when Ellanor ultimately crashed into her bed after barely being able to remove her dress and put on a nightgown. Tara was nowhere to be seen, and Jane insisted on standing guard right outside the bedroom doors, but Ellanor could not bring herself to ask why.

Her last thought before falling unconscious was of Duke Dalton following Lukas away from the ballroom, some lingering feelings of worry filling her chest. Still, this was not enough to keep her from oblivion.

***

“Ellanor, wake up, please.”

“I am trying to,” Ellanor said – or rather tried to say – to whoever was gently shaking her in her bed. Her head felt heavy with too little sleep and too much dancing, sleep refusing to let go of her consciousness. Her body tried to turn away from the voice, the dream she’d been having pulling her back in, despite her efforts to obey and wake up. The shaking in response picked up and turned almost violent.

“Come on, Ellanor…! We do not have time for this!” The voice broke its whisper on the last words, and Ellanor finally registered it as Tara’s – except the usual softness had been traded in for mild panic. The tone made Ellanor sit up straight in her bed, as if a bucket of water had been dropped over her head.

“Tara?” she asked into the darkness. Outside the tall windows the waxing moon shone with half a face, casting the room in long shadows. Ellanor found Tara’s face like a pale oval against the black. “What is going on? What has happened?”

The human did not answer, instead grabbing Ellanor’s arm and pulling her from the bed. Ellanor’s legs wobbled but held, her head spinning with sudden adrenaline.

“Quick, put this on.” Tara picked up a black bundle from the floor and tossed it to Ellanor, who clumsily caught it. “And keep your voice down, please.”

“Sorry,” Ellanor whispered and unfurled the bundle. It was a cloak, twin to the one Tara was wearing, making her blend in with the shadows. She slung it around her shoulders on top of her thin white nightgown, a shiver running up her spine from the chill air in the room. Tara had walked over to the vanity and was in the midst of digging through its drawers, grabbing anything of value, jewelry, accessories, and vials of perfume. Ellanor watched with ever growing dismay.

“Tara, please tell me what is going on.”

Stuffing her loot in a satchel slung over her shoulder under the cloak, Tara answered in hurried whispers, “Yvet has ordered her legionaries to arrest you and the Duke come morning.”

Ellanor’s mouth fell open. “What? When did you–”

“Please, Ellanor– do you trust me?” Tara said, grabbing Ellanor by the shoulders.

“Yes,” replied Ellanor without an ounce of hesitation.

Tara nodded. “I promise, I will tell you everything – once we are safe. But right now we need to leave.”

Nodding back her confirmation, Ellanor followed her handmaid to the hidden servant’s exit and knocked gently on the paneled wall with a knuckle. An equally quiet tap-tap-taptaptap sounded back from the other side, causing Tara’s shoulders to relax a fraction of an inch. The door swung open to reveal an ashen Lukas on the other side.

“Madam,” he said, keeping his voice down to little more than a breath. With a nod down the hall he let Tara pass, Ellanor at her heels, Lukas bringing up the rear.

Lightly they snuck through the labyrinth of servant’s corridors, stairs, and doors within the walls of the castle. Occasionally they would pass a door where voices and laughter sounded from the other side – guests of the ball still enjoying themselves in the small hours of the night – causing Ellanor to hold her breath and lighten her steps even more. The only thing keeping her from complete panic was Tara’s hand in her own. When she had grabbed on to it, Ellanor could not remember.

At every turn and crossroads Tara paused to check if the coast is clear, making their progress tediously slow. They had to backtrack twice after finding servants – avvir and human – blocking their way. By the time they made it to their destination, Ellanor had lost track of their heading several times to even remotely guess where in the castle they were.

Tara stopped by a thick wooden door, again rapping her knuckles against the worn surface. A moment passed before a quick taptap-tap answered. Lukas stepped past the two women and pushed the door open, sword drawn and face set in stone. Cold night air washed over them, causing Ellanor to shiver in her nightgown, pulling the cloak tighter around herself.

They came out onto a small balcony jutting out from the mountain side below the castle. Looking up at the sky Ellanor could not find the moon, concluding through the adrenaline haze that they must be at the northern side of the castle.

“Were you followed?” Jane said from the shadows, causing Ellanor to jump.

“No,” Tara answered, grip tightening on Ellanor’s hand as the door to the lit corridor shut. Without the moon – or the aid of Immortal sight – the handmaid must see close to nothing in the dark.

Lukas threw an eye around the balcony. “Where is the Duke?”

“Not here yet,” Jane answered. She bent and picked up a rucksack from the corner behind the door, throwing it across to the other guard who caught it with one hand and pulled it over his head and wings. Jane continued, having pulled out another pack from the shadows, “If he is not here in five, we leave.”

Jane had barely finished speaking when a knock came from the door, both guard’s heads snapping up, swords drawn in the blink of an eye. With a few quick steps, Jane closed the distance to the door and knocked back, a different pattern than the one before. A single knock returned and Ellanor wondered somewhere in the back of her mind when they had had the time to plan and rehearse all this.

The door swung open under Jane’s hand, revealing a white winged, dark cloaked figure in the light of the corridor. Pulling off his hood, Dalton stepped out into the night, door closing behind him. By the light of the stars Ellanor could see her father had not slept at all, still dressed in his finery from the ball.

“I am so sorry I am late,” the Duke said, voice low in the cold air. “Did you get the things I asked you to?” The question was directed at Tara.

“Yes,” the human said. “Did you?”

Reaching beneath his cloak Dalton pulled out a satchel and handed it over to Ellanor. She stared at the object in her hands, mind trying to process what was happening.

“You are not coming with us?” When the Duke did not answer, Ellanor took a step forward, paused, then took another. “You cannot stay here, Tor,” she said, hugging the satchel to her chest.

“I must,” Dalton answered, “I can give you enough time to flee, to get as far–”

“You will be killed if you stay!” Ellanor said, trying her best not to raise her voice. She was not sure whether the tears running down her cheeks were for the man in front of her, or simply due to the stress of the situation – right then and there it did not really matter. “I will not accept finding my father, only to lose him again.”

Something in Tor Dalton's eyes broke at that, his collected exterior crumbling with it. Before Ellanor could apologise or take it back, the Duke had pulled her into his arms, embracing her around the shoulders. “I am so sorry, my Ellanor,” he whispered to his daughter. “I should have done more to be a part of your life from the start; I should not have given you away with only a letter to explain my actions. You deserve so much better.”

Ellanor cried harder, not bothering to hide her shaking body. “There is still time – please, come with us.”

Tor stepped back and reluctantly let go of Ellanor. His smile at her was sad beyond words, and full of so much love that Ellanor’s heart broke. He reached out one one final time and wiped away her tears, his hand lingering against her cheek. She instinctively leaned into it.

“Like I said to you before: there is no place in this world that would accept us both equally,” Tor said. “And even if we could find such a place – fight for such a place – we would never be truly safe. My sister – she is stubborn, as I am sure you have gleaned. With me in her claws there is a better chance she will let you slip away.”

Ellanor wanted to protest, but she could not get her mouth to form the words. He was right, of course. She knew that, despite not wanting to admit it. Her father backed away, and some part of her fell away with him as Lukas gently tugged on her elbow. Eyes never leaving the white winged Duke of Redstone Castle, Ellanor let herself be lifted off the ground by her guard, the satchel still hugged tightly to her chest. Right when Lukas bent his knees and took off toward the skies with a boom of his wings, Tor Dalton raised his hand in goodbye, tears streaming down his face. Ellanor wanted to look away then, but forced herself to watch the avvir become no more than a grey spot against the red stone of the balcony.

As Ellanor took one last look at Redstone – that wretched place that could have been her home had the world been different – a smudge of gold caught her attention in one of the castle’s large windows. In an attempt to get a better view Ellanor wiped at her eyes, and craned her neck around Lukas’ shounder. The window was empty.

“Lukas,” Ellanor whispered, not daring to raise her voice to the wind. Still, the guard heard her. “I believe I saw– I saw Glados in one of the windows. Then she was gone.”

“Shit.” Lukas threw Ellanor an apologetic cringe, then banked to get closer to Jane. As the guards communicated, Ellanor checked to see if Tara was doing alright – after all she had never flown before.

Cradled in Jane’s arms, the human girl looked paler than normal, black hair whipping in the wind, but otherwise fine. She kept her eyes firmly on the horizon, seeming to ignore the death drop stretching out below them. When Lukas and Jane began talking, her eyes searched the darkness for Ellanor, but without much luck. Ellanor wished she could reach out a hand and comfort her handmaid.

The guards came to the decision to stick to the plan. They had already accounted for Yvet finding them gone as soon as dawn came – that Glados had spotted them taking off only caused them to push harder to gain more ground quicker.

Once the sky began to lighten around them enough that they could be spotted during their flight, they landed in the forests at the base of the mountains along the T’nagyan border. They rest for a bit, taking some quick inventory of their supplies – food for a few weeks, a month if they ration, two full waterskins, two sleeping bags, tools to make fire and help them navigate, as well as clothes.

Ellanor enthusiastically grabbed the trousers, shirt, and jacket from the satchel Tor had given her, and walked off to at least some privacy while changing. She happily chucked off the now crumpled and slightly damp nightgown and slid on the new clothes. They fit badly, and were too big for her, clearly meant to be worn by a man, but right at that moment they were the best clothes Ellanor had ever worn. She tied the belt into a knot at her waist after stuffing the hem of the green shirt into the trousers. The only thing that fit perfectly – and blessedly so – were the brown leather boots of a make way too fancy to be worn by a traveling peasant.

When she returned to the clearing where her guards and Tara stood waiting, the latter had also changed into another set of clothes, identical in style to Ellanor’s, and the former were standing huddled muttering over a map. Ellanor gave Tara a peck on the cheek as she passed her, and ventured up to Jane and Lukas.

“What’s the plan?”

Jane looked up and turned to her Madam, leaving the map to Lukas who folded it up and tucked it in his bag. “We got further before first light than we had hoped for, which should give us a good head start on whoever the Duchess sends after us.”

Ellanor swallowed and tried to keep her head cool. “You think she will send the Legionaries?”

“I would, if I were her,” Jane answered, then added softly, “But she will not be able to send them out without proper paperwork – she is not their commanding officer.”

“She could decide to send them out anyway and deal with the consequences later,” said Lukas, earning somewhat of a glare from Jane. He ignored it. “We should continue as soon as possible – we will travel on foot during the day, then once nightfall comes we will take flight again.”

“And how long do you think we can keep going like that?” asked Ellanor. “You will need to rest, I cannot let you–”

Jane interrupted her. “You are right, we cannot keep moving like this for very long. That is why we leave you and Miss Tara once sunup comes tomorrow to cover the tracks and lead the people on our tails in the wrong direction.” When Ellanor opened her mouth to protest, Jane continued in a commanding voice, “We have sworn to serve the Skyward family, and have done so for the past two-hundred years–” Seventy-six for me, said Lukas “–and it is our duty to make sure its sole heir lives. Even if that means the death of us.” Beside her Lukas gave a curt nod with the emphasis of a full bow. Ellanor knew right then and there that she would not win this argument.

“Alright,” she said. “Lead the way.”