Risa’s heart was so loud she was sure the assassins could hear it across the clearing. She wanted to flee. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to go to each guard and ask for forgiveness. But a viselike grip wrapped tight around her ribs, making it almost impossible to breathe. Her skin tingled, and sweat lined the back of her neck, spine, hands.
It occurred to her, with a dreadful sinking in her stomach, that this was not ordinary panic. It wove through her like vines and made her muscles tense and her limbs rigid. It was Brunhilda’s curse at work, reminding her that death was the consequence for abandoning the prince.
Risa’s vision suddenly tunneled. The crackle of the fire and thesound of the assassins’ conversation became muffled as the pressure in her chest increased.
“Musta gotten away,” another voice answered, though it sounded very far away.
Risa slowly released what was left of the air trapped in her lungs and watched the shadow-clad figures kick at the fallen soldiers. When their backs were turned, she took a shallow breath, then another, and found it was enough to keep her from becoming lightheaded.
She hoped that meant the prince was somewhere close.
But of course, now she had to go find him before Brunhilda’s new curse managed to rob her of life.
She snaked out of the bush, careful to move only when the figures were kicking at rocks or dead soldiers. When Risa’s hand grazed a thick branch left to rot on the ground, she wrapped her fingers around it.
The assassin standing over the motionless General Van Houten clicked their tongue. “He sure isn’t gonna be happy about this.”
“Wewerekinda sloppy,” another companion agreed. This one was shorter and stockier than the first two, their muscles straining through their tunic. They surveyed the area with chipped-jade eyes—the only thing their mask revealed—and stomped toward the bushes hiding Risa. “Think anyone else managed to escape?”
That was enough to spur her into action.
Risa flung the branch over her right side, launching it as far as she could manage. The assassins’ heads snapped in the direction of thewhompit made against a tree. The noise sounded wrong in her ears, but she did not pause to consider why as she scrambled backward, palms skidding over rocks and twigs. When she thoughtshe was sufficiently hidden by the trees, she leaped to her feet and began to run.
Foliage sprang in her path, sprouting beneath her feet like mushrooms. Strangled roots that looked like veins crawling across the forest floor grabbed at her ankles. Sharp fingerlike branches scraped at her and caught on her clothes. Not once did she stop; she knew from storybooks that doing so would cause her to stumble, giving the monster at her back enough time to catch her. She blindly zigzagged her way through the woods, praying to any god or witch or mythical creature that she would make it out alive.
Her breathing came in painful bursts, the witch’s curse tickling beneath her skin like an incurable itch. She willed the curse away, recalling how it had felt to break Brunhilda’s silencing spell, how the snap in her chest had reverberated through her bones.
Please break, please break, please break.
All she wanted was a life of her own. One where she didn’t need to think about being cursed, escaping assassins, surviving the night, or making it out of cursed woods. Where she wasn’t bound to the expectations of others. Where she wasn’t hurting anyone.
She ran faster, legs pumping, adrenaline rushing. There should have been something to suggest a chase: snapping twigs, the whip of a branch, crunching leaves. But there was nothing. Only silence as the Bosque swallowed up the sounds she made.
Momentum brought Risa crashing into an empty, moonlit clearing. She barely had any time to catch her breath before her foot caught on something that sent her sprawling. Dirt filled her mouth. She rolled onto her back and coughed up rotted leaves as the nearly full moon stared down.
A stinging sensation sprang behind her eyes. A knot formed in her throat. Her heart hammered in her ears, drowning out the sound of her own heavy breathing.
Waves of tears rushed over her.
It had been a long time since she last cried. So long, in fact, that she was surprised her body remembered how. It was a remnant of her childhood, when the townspeople’s whispers spoke of the awful monster masquerading as a girl in the mayor’s home.
Her curse had assisted in the massacre of twelve innocent soldiers. A prince of Kheadon was dead, or worse—kidnapped, getting tortured, or being held for ransom. Brunhilda never should have dumped Risa off on this ill-advised journey, never should have lied to the royal and his guards. Another tragedy that would haunt her.
Risa was aware that she was lying out in plain sight for anyone to see. Even if the woods could gobble up her sounds, her sobs and gasps were too frequent, too loud, to be swallowed in time. Still, she could not bring herself to stop, because she was feeling very sorry for herselfandshe could feel mud between her toes.
Distress was a place. It had made its home in Risa’s bones, had settled over her like a bedraggled coat.
Eventually, the tears dried. Her clothes were ruined. Her hair had escaped its twist and was now an unruly, tangled mess. And while she had definitely been traumatized, she was alive and mostly uninjured, which had to count for something. And that’s when she heard it.
Footsteps. The crunching of undergrowth that cut off too soon. Drawing closer until finally it stopped.
Risa closed her eyes. Counted the seconds between her breaths and waited for her last.
“Huh. I guess we all have our flaws.”
Her eyes flung open. There, impossibly lit by the moon in swaths of silver with nary a hair out of place or a speck of dirt on his white suit, was Prince Javi.
“What?” she asked with a shaky breath.
