Agnes's body went rigid.
She stopped breathing. Her fingers locked into the stone with a grip that was fueled entirely by adrenaline and the understanding that being discovered on a wall outside a second-story window would add "caught eavesdropping during escape attempt" to the résumé the stranger had just finished reciting.
Corvin reached the window. His hand appeared on the sill. His face was three feet from hers, separated by a wall and an angle and the dense winter darkness that was, for the first time in this entire escape, doing her a favor.
He looked out. His eyes swept the grounds below. He breathed the cold air once, the way a man breathes cold air when a room is stuffy and the night is available.
Agnes was frozen. Flat against the stone. Her face turned away from the window. Her body pressed into the wall with the specific intensity of a woman attempting to become architecture.
