There was a rumble of thunder. Lightning tore through the sky. Ahead of me, I saw the trees of the Ceres grove, so tight and green that Gallen could be hiding anywhere amongst them. 

“Gallen!!” I tried to shout, but all that came out was a ragged grunt. 

The ground beneath my feet trembled from the pounding hooves of a dozen horses. I muffled a cry and ran harder. I heard the snort of the horses, so close behind me that I feared I was going to get trampled. The sky split open, and rain poured onto the field. 

A flash of brown and silver breezed ahead of me, to my right, then to my left. I looked back and saw the mounted men spreading in a half-circle behind me, each one galloping about two feet apart. They were surrounding me. 

Up ahead, the last of the guards were taking their position to close the circle. If they did, I wouldn’t be able to escape without avoiding their blades. I swerved to the right, where the last opening was, hoping to outrun them, but tripped over a moss-covered stone. I yelped and fell into the field, landing hard on both my wrists. 

When I scrambled up, it was too late. I was trapped. 

“Gallen, HELP!!!!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. He was nowhere to be seen. 

I was panting hard, a stitch biting at my side. The guards tightened their noose. For an instant, my legs buckled. 

“NO,” I growled. 

I drew the knife Louise had given me earlier, its blade sharp and curved. I didn’t have to catch my reflection to know how silly I must have looked, even with a weapon in my hand: one of the guards smirked and pressed his horse on. But I wasn’t going down without a fight. 

“Don’t come any closer,” I warned him. 

“Or what? Are you going to scratch my back with that?” He bellowed, and I felt helpless. 

“I mean it.” I took a step forward, ready to fight. 

Suddenly, all of us froze. Another horse was charging at us. My heart skipped a beat. The rider came into focus, brandishing a sabre, but his entire face was covered by a black headscarf. I peered at him, hoping to recognize Gallen’s golden eyes, but my vision was clouded by beads of rain clinging to my eyelashes. 

Using the surprise to his advantage, the rider slammed into the line of horsemen, blade slicing left and right, until he reached me. Two of the guards screamed, falling off their horses. 

“Take my hand!” He ordered in Shadowtongue, his voice confident, reassuring. 

I grabbed the arm the man extended, and with extraordinary strength, he hoisted me up onto his horse and spurred it on. We galloped away, punching through the opposite half of the circle. As quickly as he had arrived, we were gone. 

“They’re following us!” I screamed, holding on to his waist with all my strength. 

“Hang tight!” the rider answered, and his horse redoubled the pace. 

We flew down a narrow dirt path. With each stride, I felt like I was going to slide down the horse’s rump. Mud flecked the back of my bare calves. I ventured a glance behind me, and saw in relief that despite its load, our horse was faster than the human’s heavy chargers. 

After a few minutes of a frantic chase, the humans were but a few specks of black behind a curtain of rain. The rider brought his mount back to a brisk trot, and guided the horse up a shallow stream. I had no idea where we were. 

“They won’t be able to track us through the water,” he explained. 

“Oh,” was all I found to answer.

Without the deafening pounding of the guard’s horses, I was able to make out the tone of the mysterious rider’s voice, smooth yet dark, like a polished river stone: King Luther had come to my rescue. The irony wasn’t lost on me: I had killed him, and now he was saving me. 

We travelled upstream for the better part of an hour, under the pouring rain. Both of my wrists were shooting shards of pain up to my neck, but I couldn’t stop holding on to Luther’s waist. I hadn’t been on a horse since the Duke had forbidden me to get close to my sisters’ ponies, fearing that I was becoming “animalistic'' at their contact. At least the weight of my backpack on my shoulders felt comforting. 

“We’ll stop here for the night.” Luther pointed at a thicket of elderberry bushes close to the bank. The rain had finally relented. “Gallen should meet us any minute.” 

“Won’t the horsemen find us, so close to the stream?” I inquired. The stream ran between two flat, open fields of wildflowers. We were exposed. 

“See these tracks, here? White-tailed deers. They don’t like open fields. There are woodlands nearby, behind these hills.” He gestured to our left. 

Luther held my waist and lifted me off the horse as if I weighed no more than one of the nightingales fluttering around us. He was oddly delicate for a man of his stature. We walked in silence for a few minutes until, as Luther predicted, we found a dense wildwood. 

Gallen was already waiting for us there.