Lady Elise coughed, a thin red line at her lips. She managed a smile, softer than anything I’d seen on her. “You are…braver than all of them,” she said, voice fading with every syllable. She reached up, fingers trailing along Scarlette’s jaw, then dropped to her chest. “Run, my love. Live.”
The next breath didn’t come. The hand on Scarlette’s face slid away, leaving a streak of blood from temple to chin. Lady Elise stared at the sky, seeing nothing now.
Scarlette bent over her, shaking so hard her teeth rattled. “Don’t go,” she sobbed, “don’t—”
But it was already done.
I put a hand on Scarlette’s shoulder. The animal in me wanted to roar, to tear the world apart, but there was no time.
The guards were coming, three of them at least, crunching through the orchard, spears out. The archer hung back, arrow drawn.
“Scar,” I said, voice sharp as I could make it, “we have to move.”
She didn’t answer. Just pressed her forehead to her mother’s, and for a second, I thought she’d die right there.
I grabbed her by the arm, pulled her up. She was lighter than she should have been; all the fire in her gone out at once. The blood on her hands smeared across her own dress, soaking the fabric.
I carried her. I didn’t give her a choice.
We slipped through the trees, low and fast. The guards didn’t expect us to break left, and we lost them for a minute in the orchard’s maze. I ducked us behind a half-dead apple tree, and for a moment, the world went quiet except for the sound of Scarlette’s breathing and the rustle of frost in the branches.
She was sobbing now, soft, the way a kid cries when they know nobody can help. I held her, tried to block the cold, and watched for the flicker of torches in the trees.
When the guards did come, they went right past, chasing phantoms.
We waited, silent, until the sound of boots faded. Only then did I let go.
Scarlette wiped her face, the blood drying in rough patches across her cheek. “She saved us,” she whispered.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
She straightened, set her jaw. “We have to go.”
The way she said it—flat, certain, final—made me believe we could.
I took her hand, and together, we slipped through the orchard and out into the night. The manor, the guards, the pain, all left behind in the silence, under the empty eyes of the moon.
***
We kept moving, every muscle strung tight with the need not to stop, not look back, not let the past drag us down like quicksand. Scarlette’s breaths were ragged, every exhale a ghost in the cold. I’d seen men break on the run before, but I had never seen a woman hold it together with such naked, bloody loss stitched into every motion. I wanted to say something, anything, but the words kept catching behind my teeth.
The woods were a wall of dark, the trees older than sin and twice as unforgiving. We moved through them, animal-quiet, stepping where the ground was soft, and the branches hung low. Behind us, the bell’s echo chased us like a curse.
Scarlette stumbled, knees hitting frozen leaves, and I knelt beside her. She didn’t weep—just breathed, fast and sharp, her hand still stained with her mother’s blood.
“We can’t stop,” I said, voice softer than I meant.
She looked at me, eyes rimmed in black, the pupils wide and wild. “You saw what they did to her,” she said, words stripped of anything but truth.
I nodded. “We’ll make them regret it. But only if we live.”
She flinched, then nodded, pressing the back of her wrist to her eyes. “I’m fine. Just—give me a second.”
I did. I listened to the wind, the crunch of boots far behind, the distant rumble of men who thought they’d already won.
She looked at her hands, then at me. “You ever want to just—” She mimed ripping her own skin off, like shedding a coat. “Become something else?”
I grinned, even if it was a bad time for jokes. “You know I do.”
