Cory came to where the moon and starlight shone upon the floor. Then he sat down upon the smooth stones, facing the window so that he would not block the streams of light. He looked up at the broken window, and he took a deep breath of the cool night air that poured down into the corridor. Then he placed the book on the floor in front of him, setting it within one of the larger patches of light. But when he did this, Cory saw something that caught his breath away. The book was still closed, and yet even now Cory could see a ghostly shimmer of silvery-blue light. It sparkled down the edges of all the pages, glinting as though the pages were made of ice that could burn, or live coals that could freeze. He arrived at the manor with something tucked within his crib, a book with proverbs that only appear in the glint of starlight. That is all that Cory knows about his infancy before the false-uncle had him raised for a life of servitude at the workhouse. His attempt to escape turns...