EIDER: Chapter 4
by Jaina Jacen (September)
“You have to help me find the way out.”
“My Sovereign, if I—if we—get caught,” Taisa says. She need not finish the sentence. If something untoward happens outside the compound, we won’t have court guards to protect us. We’re on our own. And once we return—if we return—my father will have me locked up. I cannot bear to imagine what will happen to Taisa.
“It is my Twelvemonth. I’ll not stay locked up in here and breathe the same air as these people who so fear my father’s wrath that they bow lower than a parasite. Life is bigger than this, Taisa,” I say, spinning with arms outstretched. “It’s bigger than we are. I don’t want to wilt. We go tonight.”
“Where? What life is to be found amongst the lowerclasses that you don’t see here?”
I laugh. “
