Wings of Grace

Chapter 15

SilverGlade had served over six years of his life sentence for his cruelty to Luna and many others, having captured them to use them for his own greedy purposes. The humans who had assisted him in his lab were also were also jailed on a variety of charges., including wolf napping, for taking Luna as a child. The subsequent sentences for all involved called for life in jail.

They did get to talk to each other during exercise break and secretly thought of various plans of escape. None of their ideas so far sounded possible.

Silver was permitted to have visitors, mostly those who were living and caring for the castle in his absence. One of the regular visitors was ShadowStar who as one of his long serving employees, felt a responsibility to make reports to him on the conditions in his former home. She had also kept the mystery room in the castle undisturbed, although she really didn’t know what it was or why.

She had been also keeping him up to date over the years, including Luna's and Antoine's wedding, and the arrival of the twins. She did also mention about the thorn piercing Rosebud's paw, and the handkerchief with blood spots on it that were gold.

At this, SilverGlade's eyes lit up and he became agitated…a second chance. Now he had a chance to continue his work.

He glanced over at Shadow, she had been such a loyal servant for so many years for him. Would she help him now? Would he dare ask?

Luna and Antoine continued to trust the twins to the care of ShadowStar for longer periods of time, so that they as a couple, could attend town meetings, go shopping, or just visit their friends and neighbors.

Realizing that Silver was in jail and no harm would come to their children, they had also permitted for Shadow to take them home in the afternoons. This gave them the opportunity to play with the pups at Silver's castle.

Shadows three boys were 16 years old now, but they delighted in the antics of the young ones and Lon enjoyed learning guy games from them.

Being younger and more agile, he often beat the older boys at their own game, Rosebud quickly made friends with several girls who were so fascinated with her wings that they constantly tried to get her into flying for them. She would shyly and politely declined, not wanting to show off in front of everyone and risk losing their friendship by doing so. Maybe she wasn’t too sure of them herself.

There were secret areas to Silver's castle, one room in particular to which Shadow, even though she had been the maid, housekeeper, and now caretaker, did not have access. Only he could enter, no exceptions to the rule.

Years ago Silver had invited Luna to stay at the castle in the pretext of befriending her. She had seen lights flickering behind the high narrow windows, yet Shadow offered no explanation during the guided tour of the facility. What did she know, if anything?

In the back of Luna's mind, she had her suspicions that something terrible was being planned, or already going on, in that area. Could it be another secret experimental lab such as the one where she had been held captive?

But for now Silver was in jail for his cruel treatments of others and, as such, Luna had put all the dreaded fears in the back of her mind. With him incarcerated for life now, as far as he was concerned.

Shadow gave the twins almost free reign of the castle and its surroundings whenever they came to visit, well almost. The one limitation was that they never go near that area, and for Shadow, never meant never. They accepted her orders for a while, that is, till child curiosity took over.

If they couldn’t enter from the inside the castle, they could at least look in from the outside. That room wasn’t difficult to tell apart from the rest of them, the windows were different, more narrow and higher up. It would be easy to find, but maybe not so easy to reach.

They were frequently allowed to play outdoors and each playtime they eyed up the situation and talked over schemes they could use to reach one of the windows. There was nothing to climb up on or hang onto, nothing they could move around to stand on, except each other. Lon suggested that he could get up on her shoulders then jump to reach the window sill, but Rosebud figured that if she got up on his shoulders and still wasn’t high enough, she could use her wings to advance high enough to at least peek in, that seemed to be the more feasible idea and one they finally agreed upon.

Now what day would Shadow be occupied and not notice their activity? Wednesdays she usually spent with her own three boys, checking over their lessons. That took some time to catch up on their progress and she trusted the twins to entertain themselves for an hour or so. That should do it. They have time to finish their great adventure before anyone noticed or their parents came to pick them up.

Wednesday finally came, and the pair could hardly hold back their enthusiasm about going over to Shadows. Luna was a bit suspicious, they had never been quite this excited before, and Shadow had not mentioned anything special having been planned. Luna could alter her schedule just a bit and check up on them sooner then they anticipated. If she started to feel uneasy, well, maybe not uneasy as much as inquisitive.

Shadow prepared lunch for all of the children at the usual time, then afterwards gave the twins the opportunity they had been waiting for. "Go ahead and go out in play children."

Not wanting to attract attention, they nodded to her, then slipped slowly and quietly outside, postponing their spying until they were certain that Shadow was busy with her boys and their lessons.

Then…they ventured towards the f*******n area. First they searched the surroundings for anything on which to stand to add to their combined heights. Yes, there were two rocks that might help if the twins would be able to get them stacked up. They both knew teamwork was needed to accomplish that.

Satisfied with it, Lon climbed up and perch himself up onto the pile and hoisted his sister up to his shoulders… her wings may have aided him in this chore. She stuck her paws into the window sill but still wasn’t enough to be able to pear inside. Another little boost from her wings gave her enough height to get a quick look at the room inside. Then the rocks Lon was on started to shift causing his footing to give way, leaving her hanging there, clinging to the sill with one little paw swinging in midair.

Luna's instincts had already kicked in of impending danger, she spread her wings and flew right to where the pups were, snatching Rosebud first and then Lon before they both fell. Needless to say a good scolding was given and Luna was very tempted to give a swift paw to reenforce the message.

When the twins were safely on the ground, Lon asked his sister, "What did you see in there?" RoseBud shrugged her shoulders and answered, "Nothing to really be getting excited over… just a silly old table with straps and a bunch of funny shaped bottles. What's the big deal?"

Luna didn’t comment, now her worst fears had been confirmed by her own children. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard as she felt a wave of nausea coming over her.