CHAPTER 14The Coming of the Hero
Amadel rarely gazed from her window anymore. The bedroom was too confining, too oppressive. She spent much of her time in the open, on a porch high among the rooftops of the castle. When the weather was fair, she slept there too. She sat for months as the seasons changed, no longer weeping. Often she sang to herself, halfway hoping that somehow her somber songs would drift over the sea on the wind, and reach the ears of a knight who would come and rescue her. But still the days crept slowly past, and the rain and snow came, and she retreated inside.
That winter was the most dismal she had ever known. The castle remained dark, cold, and empty. She never saw her father, and did not want to see him. She fled from the sound of his approach, and took to dining
