Fifer dared a glance at Dev. He was clever. And he was also being really thoughtful and considerate regarding all of this. How had he ever been such an annoying jerk? He’d really changed a lot since their first meeting. While he had his shirt off, Fifer peeked at his wounds. The bleeding ones seemed minor, and she rested a little more easily.

Once he and the arrow were clean, Dev put his shirt on and picked up the arrow. “If you hear any loud thumps or yelling, come rescue me,” he said with a little laugh.

Fifer smiled and adjusted the net, seeing a plump fish heading her way. “You got it.”

Dev headed for the storeroom off the courtyard, where he kept various things he’d found since he’d first arrived. On the way he practiced one of the magical spells Thisbe and Fifer had taught him in their time here—invisible hooks. Glad that he could still do it, he gathered boards and ropes and headed for the stairwell. Before going upstairs, he peered around the back of the steps. It was empty.

The foxes hadn’t returned since the dragon fight. Dev hoped they weren’t too scared to come back, but those dragons lying dead on the ground were a pretty frightening sight. He wasn’t sure what to do about them.

Dev climbed to the fifth floor, which was the top floor if you didn’t include the bulbs. It had the flat, rotted roof and ceiling that Fifer and Thisbe had fallen through when the Revinir had dropped them. Dev knew the floor was rotted too. Both girls had broken through that as well. So he had to be very careful to stay at the edges of the room, where the joists were the sturdiest.

He eyed the length of rope that hung temptingly from the hole in the center of the roof. Then he placed two magical invisible hooks on the wall at about knee height and rested one of the boards across them, securing it to make a step. He placed two more and secured another board higher up the wall, and then did it a third time. After adding more hooks above the top step and placing Florence’s arrow across them to use as a handhold, he climbed up carrying the longest rope he had. Then he aimed for a spot at the wood ceiling about halfway between him and the hole, where the creeping rot didn’t appear to have reached yet. He placed a couple of hooks in that area, then took the long rope and made a loop in one end. He hung on to the arrow with one hand and, with the other, began to throw the rope like a lasso at the ceiling in an attempt to catch one of the hooks.

After several tries, while Dev held on to the other end, the loop caught and hung there.