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As I start to whisper about the sudden stillness, Agnar pushes me to the side.

A big white body flies out of the woods with a high-pitched scream.

An alicorn.

For one breath, my heart soars. Alicorns are sacred protectors. The oldest stories say they chose Meridia as their home because the land itself called to them. We built our whole kingdom around their herds. Shaped our laws to protect them. They’re why I became a Warden in the first place. I spent a large portion of my childhood watching them land in meadows to graze and nap.

The experience never got old. They were so impossibly beautiful that it hurt to look at them.

Agnar slides to a halt, simultaneously pulling out his sword and shoving me behind him.

He must not recognize this alicorn mare as an herbivore. If he did, he wouldn’t be so worried.

I peek around him, ready to laugh and explain we’re in no danger. Then I get a better glimpse of the wounded animal.

Blood-splattered feathers rain down as her enormous wings beat out of sync against her barrel chest. Her horned head lifts, showing half an equine face. The right side has been ripped away, leaving putrid flesh dangling under an empty eye socket.

Thick yellow-green foam coats her muzzle, dripping onto the mare’s chest in long strings as she forces herself to her feet. Her eye socket isn’t as empty as I thought. Globs of white gel sit in a pool of blood, leaking out with every twitch of the alicorn’s head. Her remaining eye rolls wildly in its socket.

Her uncoordinated, jerky motions are too ungainly for her to remain airborne. Legs kicking into a sprint, her hooves slam onto the road in front of us.

“Back up.” Agnar yanks free of my grip on his shoulder. “Slowly.”

The alicorn snorts, spraying more foam from her nostrils, spattering the gray dirt between us with pink-tinged mucus. She takes a step forward. Another. Each motion is pained and halting, as if she has to remember how her legs work between each placement. She bares her flat teeth in a silent snarl, more wolf than horse as she glares through her single eye.

“This isn’t right.” I back away faster, my hand over my mouth in horror, giving Agnar space in case he draws his weapon. “They don’t… alicorns don’t hunt. They’re not carnivores. They don’t track prey. This is…”

“They do if they’re rabid.” Agnar shifts his shoulders, then freezes, glancing back at me with a scowl. “It’s about to charge, and I need you to be ready to move.”

Everything I know about alicorns, every lesson Veradin taught me about creature bonding and reading animal behavior, screams that this is impossible. Or at the very least unnatural. Alicorns can be fierce when protecting their herds. They fight when cornered or when their young are threatened. But this type of predatory concentration? They don’t think that way. It’s not in their nature. What’s wrong with the poor creature? Was she attacked by one of those monsters?

The alicorn shakes her massive head, staggering while foam continues to fling from her mouth. Old, weeping yellow wounds mar her legs, while injuries from her crash leak red blood. One knee is horribly swollen and twisted.

With slow, almost drunken motions, her horn drops, angling toward Agnar’s chest.

Then her head swings toward me.

The wild rolling of her remaining eye stops. Shivers rack her body, fluttering her outstretched wings.

For a moment, recognition sparks in the alicorn’s expression, followed by desperate need.

Not of me specifically. Of what I am.

Of the Warden magic that sings faintly in my blood and bones.

Agnar adjusts his weight. “Shit. Esme, when I say ‘move,’ run to the right as fast as you can.”

The alicorn bolts straight for me.

“Move!” Agnar leaps left.

I throw myself right.

The alicorn follows me, adjusting her trajectory mid-charge with terrifying precision despite her erratic, broken gait. Her sharp hooves tear up the road, sending dirt and stones flying. Her horn sweeps low in her attempt to hook my legs.

My heart slams against my ribs. As I sprint for the trees, all reasoning flees my mind. My Light Walking finally engages, and my boots find purchase on the soft forest floor, the magic carrying me faster than my legs could manage.

Not fast enough, though.