The Window That Doesn’t Lock
Sneaking a unicorn out of a feather-lined tower through a third-story window onto a cloud the size of a beanbag chair is the kind of plan only a nine-tenths-grounded prince could love.
It works anyway. Nimbus's little storm cloud — he calls her Growler — puffs herself up to carry three, grumbling thunder no louder than a cat's purr, and the two of you haul Sera through the unlockable window in a scramble of hooves and whispered ows. Then Growler drops silently down the palace wall, hugging the towers' shadows, while the dawn watch flies its rounds above.
“Escaping the night before the Trials,” Sera murmurs. “The Court will call us guilty for certain now, you know.”
“The Court,” Nimbus says, leaning into the wind, “can call us whatever it likes after your herd is warned. That's the thing about doing the right thing rudely. It's still the right thing.” He grins back at you over his shoulder. “Also they can't unprince me twice. Hold on.”
Growler falls off the edge of the cloud-island like a dropped hat, and the whole sky opens below you.