A Court of Bastards [ACOTAR]

Chapter 25

There's something about the dark that soothes a troubled soul.

No matter where you are in the world, comfort can always been found in the still of night. It was a different kind of darkness to the absence of light, Fiona thought; the kind that crept between pockets of flame, that flickered and moved in the shadows. That kind was not so gentle. But the night sky - a blanket of black, a constant that lay undisturbed and undisturbing above the world...that darkness was a balm. 

It was the kind that lurked in the corners which chased Fiona to her windowsill after hours, seeking the solemn comfort of the night. It was near dawn, as it always was when she awoke, sweating and wide-eyed, scanning the folds of shadow in her room. It was truly an absence, one which her frantic mind sought to fill with faces, leering at her from every angle. The night sky was not so easy to manipulate, not so easily fooled. 

Fiona had eased herself onto the ledge, legs swinging over the sill as light began to bloom in the distance. Eris' grounds and the surrounding countryside were an artist's dream - the palette of autumn colours was as endless and breathtaking as the stretch of the forests. Within the woodlands roamed countless species of faeries, fae, wolves, elk, rabbits...all with more freedom than Fiona. Even the ditch rats could roam where they pleased.

A breeze caressed her bare legs and Fiona looked down. Three floors of the Forest House broke the dirt, revealing nothing of the subterranean maze beneath the arboretum and manicured lawns. Three floors...Fiona peered past her toes as she imagined the rope of sheets in her bottom drawer. Maybe it would make it to that window by the fern - could she jump from there?

She leaned an inch further and then-

 her hand slipped 

- taking her weight with it. 

Fiona probably should have screamed. Instead she gasped, and, strangely, her mind focused to a single point. And that point was a hundred metres away in the middle of the lawn...where she found herself standing the next moment. 

It wasn't until the red haze had faded from her peripheral vision that she realised what she'd done. 

She'd winnowed.

Fiona glanced down at her feet, her toes wriggling in the grass. She stared at the open window across the lawn, her head cocked at an angle. It shouldn't have been possible - the Forest House was heavily warded so that no one except the High Lord could winnow in or out. But she'd done it without thinking, just as she'd been tumbling past the second floor. 

It was at that moment that she realised just how many windows she was visible from. Though it was still early, the sky only beginning to pale, she couldn't risk standing in full view of the house in her nightgown. Giggling a little stupidly, Fiona crept across the bare expanse of neatly trimmed grass toward the tree line. 

It had been weeks since she'd left that pile of twisted wood and stone, and now she was taking a casual stroll across the paths she'd gazed at so longingly from her many alcove windows. The urge to run came on the westward wind, skittering across her skin and leaving goosebumps in its wake. Every nerve in her body was itching to sprint - in any direction - and never look back. But locked itself inside the small, certain steps she was taking. She couldn't leave without her knives, she reminded herself. Not without any food, and certainly not dressed in her thin linen nightclothes. So she kept instead to the shadowed canopy of the forest, ignoring the occasional jerk and tremble in her feet as the wind whispered to her.

Go, go, go, go, go -

An hour in, she heard the whinney of horses as Aidan left the stables, on time as always.