The Pearl Wing was quiet again.
Roxy sat on the edge of the clam bed, the black coral key Nerissa had given her burning a hole in her palm. Zale was asleep in his crib, his chest rising and falling in a peaceful rhythm, blissfully unaware that his grandmother had just handed his mother a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Roxy was elated, although confused, she was elated. She could finally get out of there.
Two tides, Nerissa had said. The guards will be distracted. Roxy looked at the key. Then she looked at the door and the empty space beside her where Caspian usually slept.
She could do it. She could slip out right now. She could use the confusion of the post-party cleanup to vanish into the Treasury corridor. She could open the Gate and be gone before anyone realized she was missing.
It would be clean. It would be easy.
