“Fine,” I rasp. “Just run.”
We cut through a drainage tunnel half-choked with moss, emerge near the outer district—warehouses and old smelters, empty at this hour. Somewhere behind us, hooves strike cobblestone. Too many. Too close.
“Faster,” Kragna growls.
I push harder. The edges of my vision blur. Sweat stings my eyes. My ribs scream with each breath, like I’m being squeezed from the inside out. Still, we don’t stop.
The gates are close. Not the main ones—they’d be closed by now, swarming with guards. But there’s a crumbled breach in the southern wall, half-hidden by ivy and old scaffolding. Skeela’s people mapped it for us days ago.
We make it.
Slip through with barely an inch to spare between patrols.
Then we’re in the trees.
The city vanishes behind us like a bad dream, swallowed by shadow and smoke. Alarms still echo in the distance, but the forest mutes them, drinks the noise like blood in dirt.
Kragna doesn’t let go of my hand.
We don’t speak for a long time.
Just breathe.
Breathe and run.
When we finally slow, it’s because we have to. My knees buckle, and he catches me before I hit the ground. We collapse into a thicket of ferns, the kind that glow faintly with bioluminescent spores. They light his face in eerie blue.
He stares at me like he’s counting my breaths.
“Did he hurt you?” he asks, voice low and lethal.
“No,” I say. “He tried. I made sure he didn’t.”
Kragna nods, slow and grim. He brushes a leaf from my hair, then traces the edge of my mask.
“You’re still bleeding,” he says.
I touch my shoulder, wince. There’s a long gash—shallow, but angry. Probably happened in the scuffle, or from a guard’s blade too close for comfort.
He pulls out a cloth from inside his cloak. Presses it gently to the wound. His hands shake, just a little.
“I thought I lost you,” he murmurs.
“You didn’t.”
“Almost.”
I can’t answer that. The words lodge behind my teeth, sticky and sharp.
Instead, I lean against him.
The night is cold. The forest smells like damp moss and old magic. My gown is ruined. My feet ache. My throat’s raw from breathing too hard. But I’m alive.
For now.
16
KRAGNA
