SHE RAN, HE HUNTED
I've spent three months making sure that never happens to me.
I slip out through the back path Mara described, and for a while my feet move like they've been waiting all day for permission. The trees close in fast, cutting off the last of the torchlight behind me. My legs remember this rhythm better than anything else, the cold air, the uneven ground, I ran like this the night I met Kael.
I don't let myself think about him. Thinking about him is how I get caught.
Then something in my chest pulls tight, sudden and sharp, like a hand closing around a rope I didn't know I was holding.