Read Online Ash & Bramble by Sarah Prineas - Free Book Online Page A

deep breath. In my hands, the rope is solid, taut, created with scraps of silken ball gowns, and it is stitched with thread as strong as spider silk. My will is even stronger. Clinging to the rope with one hand, keeping my feet braced, I reach my other hand into my pocket and slip the thimble onto my finger. “Enough of this,” I whisper, and, flinching as a wickedly sharp thorn slashes at me, I reach out and touchthe wall. The wall shudders; the brambles writhe, the thimble burns. The silver turns molten red, and then flares into a fiery white.
    In answer, a bolt of lightning rips across the sky; thunder crashes; and I look up, blinking the rain out of my eyes, to see the Jacks’ grappling hook just over my head. With Shoe pushing my boots from below, I haul myself up the last few feet, and over the grasping brambles that are slippery and crackling with ice. I crouch on the top of the wide wall, gasping for breath. A moment later, Shoe joins me, and we cling to each other, panting, as the icy rain slams down around us.

CHAPTER
6
    T HE GUARDS ARE STILL COMING. S HOE TEARS HIMSELF away from Pin’s burning warmth, and with shaking hands he pulls up the rope and jerks the hook out of the fortress side of the wall. Then he turns and jams it onto the outside of the wall, low enough so that it won’t be seen from the courtyard. The rain has turned to ice. He is soaked to the skin and numb with cold.
    â€œC-c-c-” he stutters, his lips too cold to form the words. Come on, Pin . We’re not safe yet. He points at the rope hanging down, and Pin swipes the rat tails of wet hair out of her eyes, grips the rope with bloodstained hands, and swings herself over the edge of the wall. The thorns got her, he realizes with a prickle of worry. Hand over hand, bracing her feet against the wall, she climbs down the rope, fast, andhe follows. There are no brambles on this side of the wall, just ice-slick stones. Shards of ice flake from the rope as it stretches under his weight. He gets halfway down and checks over his shoulder to see Pin waiting on the ground, her face a pale oval in the darkness. Then his foot slips on a patch of icy wall, and his numb hands stop gripping, and he slithers down the rest of the rope, landing in a heap at her feet.
    She crouches beside him, her gray eyes wide and shadowed. “Are you all right?” she asks.
    The ground, saturated with rain, is soft. He’ll have a bruise or two, but nothing broken. Nodding, he climbs to his feet, flexing his frozen fingers to drive out the cold. “Th-thorns?” he manages to get out, and takes Pin’s hands in his. A nasty gash crosses the inside of her wrist, dark red against bone-white skin; it drips blood.
    â€œIt’s all right,” she says, and closes her other hand over the wound to stop the bleeding.
    Shoe turns to see what kind of land lies outside the Godmother’s fortress. The wall, gray stone with darker patches of ice and water, stands at their back. Before them is a dense forest of pine trees, dark and menacing under the swollen black clouds, crowded with ferns drooping under a crust of ice. The damp, pine-needle-covered forest floor is studded here and there with mossy rocks.
    Holding her wrist, Pin is looking up the wall. Her short hair is plastered to her head from the rain. Her lips are blue with cold. “It’s a sh-shame to leave the rope and the hook,”she says, shivering. “I wonder if my thimble could bring it down.”
    Shoe finds his voice, speaking through chattering teeth. “Leave it, Pin. We don’t have time. They’ll be coming.”
    â€œThere’s no gate in the wall,” Pin answers, “so they can’t come after us unless they come over, and that’ll take them a while to work out.” She gives her sudden wicked grin. “That’s irony for you.”
    â€œWhat’s i-irony?” Shoe asks. He shivers convulsively and wraps his arms