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“Would you…” he started.

She, however, did not wait for him to finish. She leaned forward, and her horse responded immediately, galloping.

Eveline laughed as she looked back at her husband, who looked stunned.

Her horse was covering ground fast. However, she knew William would recover quickly, and he might soon try to catch up to her.

As the wind blew through her loose hair, she wondered briefly why she had given up horse riding. It felt positively exhilarating, and the scent of the woods had a rather calming effect on her.

Eveline could not help but close her eyes for just a moment to thoroughly enjoy the wind and the atmosphere. She sighed deeply. The feeling was immeasurable. She felt free, and as her horse’s hooves bounced off the ground, she felt at peace.

She was quick to snap out of her reverie when the sound of another galloping horse approached. William was near, and she could not let him overtake her. If she allowed him to, he would taunt her terribly.

Therefore, she nudged her horse to gallop faster, focusing only on leaving a significant distance between her and her husband.

This was why it took her a while to notice that she could no longer hear nor see his horse. She figured that she must have put a lot of distance between them and continued on her way.

She had only gone a small distance when William’s brown horse shot out of the woods and into the path in front of her.

Eveline’s eyes widened with shock at the betrayal.

Her husband turned back towards her, now laughing.

“You cheated,” she protested.

“Is it quite cheating if I am simply using my knowledge of the terrain to my advantage?” he asked, chuckling.

Eveline shook her head. “I should have known you were up to no good,” she said, now resolved to beat him at his own game.

She led her horse to a muddy path on the left, hoping she could cut across in front of him. She leaned forward, causing the horse to move faster so that she could beat her husband.

Soon enough, she saw a stream in the distance. She wanted to arrive at the stream before her husband. At that moment, nothing else mattered—she was focused only on that one goal.

That was why she was so startled when something hit her head from above. The object slid down her jacket—a cluster of feathers.

“Ahhhhh!” she yelped, momentarily closing her eyes.

All she heard was her horse neighing, and the next moment, the beast bucked, panicking.

Terrified, Eveline tried to jump off her horse. However, she landed face-first on the ground, with her feet still trapped in the stirrups.

Her horse, oblivious to her troubles, continued bucking, dragging her along. Her hair caught twigs and branches, but her horse did not stop. She tried to steady herself, but her arms and elbows hit the rocks. The sharp pain she felt told her that her skin had peeled.

Eveline’s panic turned into full-blown terror when she saw that they were now fast approaching the stream, and she still had not been able to get herself out of the saddle.

She could see the water clearly by the time she finally steadied herself and grabbed the saddle, even as her horse continued dragging her through the woods.

As a desperate last resort, she pulled herself up and kicked her feet out of the stirrups, so that she now dangled in the air. However, just when she freed her feet, her horse had gotten to the bank of the stream, and even though she scrambled to get out of the way of its hind hooves, she was not fast enough.

With a kick of her horse’s hind hooves, her right ankle slammed against a large rock at the bank of the stream.

“OWWWWWW!” Eveline screamed for the second time in a rather short while, this time in pain.

Even though the riding boot she was wearing protected her, the pain that still shot up her leg and splintered through her whole body was intense, and she could not move her feet for a moment.

She tried to sit up while she watched the horse gallop away, but it was difficult, as she could not even get her right ankle to move.

She gritted her teeth as she tried to lift her injured leg to sit down. She wondered for a moment how long it would take for someone to finally find her.