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He wasn’t fucking taking me alive.

I hurried with quick, soft steps down the creaking hallway to the end, where a massive bay window looked out to a small garden Gaion kept for the kitchen. Off to the far right, barely visible from the window, stood the small stable where my kisteral was penned. In Julra we used to ride them barebacked, and I hoped that skill was not lost when I snatched the poor beast up to ride out.

With some measure of forethought, I kept a coil of spare rope in my hand instead of packing it and tied one end to the closestdoorknob. There was no mistake the knob would break off when I put my not-insignificant amount of weight against it, but the theory was it would slow my fall enough to not incapacitate me at the bottom when I rappelled down the back of the building.

My foot was planted on the windowsill outside the window when the man reached that eighth step. His brown eyes widened in an otherwise serious expression, and they quickly took in the rope tied to the door, and me holding it as I stood perched on the windowsill.

Don’t think about falling, don’t think about falling.

It took a few moments for him to take in the whole situation, and I damn well took advantage of his shock to give a smarmy salute and push off the ledge to drop down. My heart practically leapt into my throat out of fear. This had to be the single most idiotic thing I’d ever done, and that was saying a lot.

“Wait! Gods damn it, stop!” His footfalls followed me out and I felt the rope yank back, as if he grabbed it to pull me back up.

I glanced over my shoulder to check my distance to the ground. The sight of it still made my stomach churn uneasily, but I was close enough to land without breaking bones… probably. Hopefully.

Guess we’ll find out.

The fibers burned my palms as soon as I loosened them enough for the rope to slide through. The immediate slack that slithered back through the window was complimented by theoofand a heavy thud of the man hitting the hall’s floorboards. I man have underestimated the distance a bit—a sharp pain stabbed up from my left ankle verified that when it took the brunt of the fall, and I stumbled gracelessly. Thank the gods no one was around to watch me stagger and nearly trip while hobbling toward the stable. It was not my finest moment.

“Haron? Stop there, I’m Sett with the Royal Guard!”

I didn't stop.

Sett cursed loudly. I wasn’t going to break my single-minded focus on getting to the stable by checking whether he’d jumped from the window, too. Since I hadn’t been tackled in the next five seconds, I assumed he’d taken the front door like a normal human. Stumbling through the stable doors, I thanked whatever Old God took pity on me for placing my kisteral in the first stall to the right.

I don’t think Maura, the stubborn thing, was going to give as much mercy. She reared her long neck back in retaliation when I threw her stall door open. Surely this was my sister’s revenge from the grave for naming my precious mount after her.

“Come now, Maura,” I tried to soothe her through gritted teeth. My ankle was screaming now. “Please don’t be difficult this time.”

The beast was much too intelligent for her own good. She eyed me warily, likely noticing I lacked the tack and saddle I usually offered for her to sniff and proceeded to snort in my face. Sett was surely almost here, so I bypassed our usual song and dance and practically flung myself over her sturdy back. Predictably, Maura was not pleased.

I still managed to toss my injured leg over and right myself, despite her fidgeting. “Hya!”

Maura slammed herself into the gate just as Sett skidded through the open stable door. He was hit squarely in the chest hard enough to knock him on his back with a breathless wheeze. Maura’s plate-sized hoofs narrowly missed trampling his leg as we sprinted past his prone body.

Despite the fact I’d likely rolled my ankle, and the Royal Guard was going to be chasing us down the whole way to Julra, I could feel a reckless smile spread across my lips. “The next apple tree we find, I’m picking them all for you, girl!” I patted Maura’s neck affectionately as we raced toward the northern gate of Gilamorst toward Julra.

I couldn’t let my heart pull me back to the palace. I had to recover my tome from the Clifftombs, before Gennel managed to kill me. I didn’t think she would take failure as an option twice.

Maura the kisteral endeavored to be just as stubborn and conniving as Maura the sister. The lack of tack to manage her head was part of the problem, but most of it was likely due to the urgency she could sense from me pushing her to run half a day’s distance from Gilamorst. Now, we stood in an unfortunate farmer’s cabbage patch, and Maura seemed set on finishing an entire row’s worth of heads. Our only saving grace was that it was the middle of the night.

“Let’s go!” I said as loud as I dared, which wasn’t more than an angry whisper. She continued to ignore me, munching away on her sixth cabbage while I stood impatiently on the edge of the patch. Trying to drag her away without tethers proved less than successful, and I had a huge bite-sized bruise on my shoulder for my efforts.

Maura wasn’t taking me with her on this thievery.

She gave another snort that sounded insulting. “I guess I’ll just go leave some drummons on the farmer’s doorstep, you ungrateful beast. Why my feed wasn’t good enough for your exacting tastes is beyond me!”

Stomping off didn’t give the desired effect. My left leg nearly buckled with a stab of pain as my ankle retaliated. The muttered curses spewing from my mouth would have mademothers cover their children’s ears as I skirted the small plot of land and walked up the dirt road leading to the farmer’s log cabin. Its simple construction reminded me of another time I’d stumbled up to a similar cabin, one that belonged to the family of the girl whose body I’d borrowed for the past five years. Sadness clenched my heart tight, remembering the family home completely ransacked and half-charred.

The mother, chopped to pieces and scattered across the property.

Her husband, the farmer, strung up on his scarecrow post and burnt to little more than blackened bones.

And their daughter… She was barely alive when I found her limp body on the blood-soaked ground behind the cabin. Her blue eyes were so vivid and burned with a vengeance I was all too familiar with, even as that light dimmed and snuffed out. Those eyes looked like mine, as I watched the life leave them and my soul seeped into the first of many bodies I would inhabit over the century. Her ravaged body looked like how I felt. The last heir of a country so brutally destroyed there was nothing left behind but a battered form.

I think that was when my sense of justice flared into life again.

Ramy Gulom, the daughter’s name, I learned shortly after I took it over. It was the last words screamed from the raider’s throat before I cut him open to bleed out on the forest floor just outside the City of Scholars, just like the rest of his sick group of outlaws. Just like he did to Ramy’s family.