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The alicorn thunders after me. I can hear her ragged breathing, smell the sweet-sick rot of the infection eating at her from the inside. Something tugs at my braid…either teeth or the tip of her horn. I don’t know which.

“Tree!” Agnar’s order penetrates the pounding hooves. “Climb the fucking tree.”

A large tree with low branches looms twenty feet ahead, but it seems so far with the alicorn staggering after me, gaining ground.

With burning lungs, I push harder and jump for the first limb. My fingers close around rough bark, and I swing myself upward onto the branch. As I climb higher, my shoulder rips open. I scramble up to the next bough, tearing the skin on my palms.

The alicorn hits the tree with enough force to jar leaves loose, and I scrabble to maintain my grip. Below, the alicorn stabs the trunk, tears her horn free, and repeats the action.

“Why is this alicorn following you?” Agnar circles from a distance, staying behind the animal as she rotates around me. He can’t strike without getting in range. Why doesn’t he use his magic like he did with the bandits? He’s hardly used it at all today. He can’t possibly be tired.

“I don’t know!” I haul myself onto a thicker branch, clinging to another limb to stay upright.

The alicorn backs up, shaking herself like a dog shedding water. Then her wings unfold.

My eyes widen.

Oh gods. Oh no.

The alicorn leaps.

Her beating wings flatten the grass and tumble Agnar backward. He throws one arm up to block the wind.

The alicorn rises maybe three feet.

Then she plummets, crashing to the ground in a graceless heap. She scrambles up, fury radiating from every line of her corrupted body.

The alicorn raises her mutilated head and looks right at me while clinging to the tree above her.

She screams, a soul-wrenching mix of rage, grief, and despair that strikes me straight in the heart.

What she’s so desperate for, I can’t tell.

Maybe my death, or the ability to fly…

Her soft brown eye catches mine again.

For help?

The alicorn stops like she’s hit her limit. Her legs collapse under her. The air erupts from her lungs as she falls onto her side, her head hitting the ground hard enough to bounce. With one last, terrible wheeze, she gives up the fight.

From this angle, I can see the full extent of the damage. Her once velvety muzzle has been shredded. Long gouges run from her nostrils to her lips as if someone took a serrated knife and slashed the flesh again and again. Blood crusts the gray muzzle.

She’s suffering. And doesn’t know why. She’s desperate for relief.

These are facts I know as fully as I know my own name.

The wrongness I felt before intensifies until it becomes a physical weight pressing down on my shoulders. This creature is dying.

I slide down the tree, the bark scraping my arms and legs through my clothes.

“Stay up there out of his reach.” Agnar draws closer. “Esme, I swear to every god I don’t trust⁠—”

“It’s a mare, and she’s dying.” My boots hit the ground with a thud even as my hands clutch the tree trunk. The alicorn’s eye tracks me sluggishly, but she doesn’t stir beyond her labored breathing. “She’s suffering.”

“Which is exactly why you should stay up there where it’s safe.” Agnar shifts position, putting himself between us. His sword remains drawn and ready. “She’s mad and was trying to kill you thirty seconds ago. She tried to climb a fucking tree. Does that sound like a sane alicorn to you? Use your brain.”

He tries to block me, but I push away from the trunk and duck under his arm. “I am. This is what I was born for…helping the sick and ill.” It’s true. More true than anything else I’ve said since he cornered me in that alley days ago.