Wings of Morning Read Online Free Page B

with two additional conically capped turrets on opposite corners from the already existing gabled watchtowers.
    As she headed up the hill toward the old stone dwelling, Regan’s gaze lifted. A four-story, square tower topped by an attic and a garret story beneath its steeply pitched roof, the building’s seven-footthick walls had withstood numerous assaults in the three hundred years of its existence. Made of local stone, the dark gray house was a sophisticated balance of intricacy and symmetry. It was also, however, a dwelling of few comforts or amenities.
    The ground floor, which held storage cellars, a small armory, and two prison cells, was dark and dank, its only illumination three narrow, vertical, defensive loopholes. A turnpike stair led to an L-shaped first floor, which housed the kitchen, several more storage rooms, and a general workroom. It at least, though, had three windows and a garderobe. The Great Hall on the second floor, plastered and painted with rapidly fading scenes, was even more brightly lit, with windows in each wall, two with stone seats, a fine fireplace, and garderobes at both ends of the south wall.
    On the third floor, in addition to the two, large bedchambers with fireplaces, was another, smaller bedroom in one of the turrets that had always been Regan’s. Or, leastwise, she thought sadly, her room until her wedding night, when she had gone to join Roddy in the largest of the two main bedchambers. Access to the lower stories of the turrets—which additionally held garderobes—was also available from the third floor.
    The fourth story was the attic. Besides offering entry to the upper stories of the turrets, in inclement weather the attic was used to hang the wash from ropes strung from the rafters. It had also been, throughout the days of her girlhood, a favorite place for her to play.
    At the memory, Regan’s lips curved in a sad little smile. Many the times she had escaped up there to hide from the wrath of Roddy and Walter’s ill-tempered stepmother. Perhaps the woman had been dull-witted enough never to suspect the attic as a hiding place. More likely, though, with her ever-increasing corpulence, she lacked the energy to climb the additional flights of stairs on the twisting, circular turnpike.
    One way or another, the attic had become Regan’s haven. From its imposing height, she could peer out the windows on each wall and see for miles in every direction. Sometimes, when the weather was particularly miserable, Roddy and Walter would even deign to entertain her childish pleas to play with her. Together, they’d create all sorts of scenarios, of knights and ladies, of heroes and dragons, and sometimes, though not as often, of saints and martyrs.
    High up in the lofty heights of the attic, for a short while Regan was temporarily able to set aside the raw wound of her grief, the ever-present doubts and questions about her role in her mother and father’s deaths, the waking nightmare that had become her life. In those blessed, highly imaginative moments, she could almost believe her parents were yet on their way home. She could almost believe that they’d soon be reconciled as the loving, happy family they had once been, and all the misery and fear would disappear as if it had never, ever happened.
    Those fleetingly happy times with the two brothers, however, had soon faded. Roddy’s interests rapidly turned to more carnal ones, and he began spending what seemed both day and night pursuing every maiden in sight. And Walter, but two years younger, wasn’t long in joining him.
    By that time, wee Molly had been born, and Regan soon had her care to preoccupy her. So Regan watched the two brothers’ escapades in curiosity, then shook her head in bemusement, secretly grateful they continued to view her as naught more than their little foster sister.
    The day came, though, when all that changed.
    “R-Regan!” a male voice, unsteady most likely from the exertion of running up the steeply