Oliver could feel the mortar of the stone tower beneath his fingernails. He didn’t know how much longer he was going to be able to hold on. But then again, below him there were only crashing surf and jagged rocks. One false move, and he would surely be dead.
With a mighty heave, he hoisted himself onto the wide stone ledge of the tower window.
But instead of seeing a beautiful princess, the girl of his dreams, the one he’d traveled far and wide to find-he saw a tall, caped man pacing back and forth. “Well?” the man demanded.
His voice was like fog crawling over the horizon. His hair fell like a raven’s wing over one brow, and a scar that ran the length of his face curved his mouth downward. His fingers were long and bony, tapping impatiently on his arms.
“I don’t have all day,” he said.
No one had told him to expect anyone other than his true love in this tower, but in retrospect, Oliver knew that he should have anticipated this. If it had been easy, someone else would have rescued Seraphima by now.
Before he could begin to wonder how he-a boy who didn’t even carry a sword and who had promised his mother he wouldn’t fight-could defeat a villain who was at least six inches taller and forty pounds heavier, Seraphima emerged from behind a folding screen.
She was wearing a dress so white it was dazzling, beaded and jeweled at the bodice, and with sleeves that tapered down to her fingers. On her head was a gossamer wedding veil.
Immediately, over Rapscullio’s shoulder, she saw Oliver.
Oliver’s eyes lit upon her silver hair, her violet eyes, her heart-shaped face. And just like that, something inside shifted very subtly, so that all the empty spaces in him suddenly disappeared, so that his breath was timed to hers, so that his blood sang.
This was why there was music, he realized. There were some feelings that just didn’t have words big enough to describe them.
Seraphima’s lips parted. “Finally,” she whispered, as if she had known he was coming all along.
But that one word was enough to make Rapscullio turn around, his cape billowing like a cloud of smoke. “Well, well,” he said, every word a whipping, “look who’s crashed the party.”