ONE
Taro was a bone fanatic with a sugar headache and an unhealthy obsession with black eye liner. Her pockets were always filled with vertebrae and boiled sweets, and her eyes were as dark as the crux of night. She also lovingly nursed an attitude problem that rivalled the direness of the rotting castle she lived in. She knew this about herself, and she was at peace with it. Plenty of people thought she was abominably irritating, and quite frankly it was the only thing that got Taro through the day.
She had considered herself mentally unbreakable until this tortuous procession to the dining hall. It was screwing with the timing of her stunningly crafted, hideously dangerous and incredibly clever escape plan.
Taro kicked her heels and worked remnant toffee from her molars with her tongue. It was all the sustenance she had for three hours of queuing through the castle’s grossly misshapen guts. She’d spent those hours picking over her escape plan with the determination of a starving crow stripping meat from a bone. For this to work she had to be perfect. So while scheming, she’d quietly queued past the kitchens where the screaming cooks were presumably killing each other with spoons. She’d obediently dragged herself by the malevolent library, where one could suffer the worst boredom of one’s life. She’d even walked through doors held open by skeletons, fighting the urge to steal one of their ribs.
Now there was a bottleneck at the entrance to the dining hall. Something tiresomely ceremonial was happening. Taro, whose life literally hinged on executing her escape…
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