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I whirled, my hand going to my waist for my rapier. But I wore only a shift and a dressing gown. My weapons were out of reach in my chambers—behind the armed intruder. I had a scant moment to see the attacker’s dark clothing and glinting steel—

Then they were past me, closing in on their target. Not me. Aric.

I’d already scrambled backwards before I realized the assassin’s aim. Now they were halfway around the bed, knife raised to strike. Aric’s eyes went huge with panic. He threw up his arms to shield his face, as if that would be enough to stop the knife.

No time to think. Only to act. I snatched up a pillow and rolled across the bed, throwing myself between Aric and the assassin. Steel flashed. I thrust the pillow upwards to block the descending blade. Silk ripped and feathers exploded. I drove my knee into my attacker’s abdomen. They doubled over with a grunt.

“The lanterns!” I yelled at Aric, who was staring, frozen. “Hand me a lantern!”

The assassin clutched their gut, wheezing. I grabbed a lamp from Aric’s fumbling fingers and smashed it over their head. Glass shattered. A viscous white liquid sprayed everywhere, cold as it soaked through my dressing gown.

I shoved the attacker away. They went down hard against the wall. The remnants of the lantern dripped from my fingers, mingling with a darker fluid—blood. My hand was burning, a tingling sensation spreading up my arm. I’d cut myself on the glass.

I had no time to tend my wounds. The assassin was already stumbling back to their feet. The knife flashed in their hand as they adjusted their grip. Their face was covered, but their dark eyes darted to Aric, plotting a route around me. My efforts had thwarted them for only a moment, and now I had no defenses.

No weapons. No shields. Even the glass from the lantern had disintegrated into shards too small to use as blades.

It will defend you against an attacker.

My hand flew to the locket at my neck, slicking the silver with my blood.

The assassin darted forward. Aric shoved me aside, stepping in front of me.

“Don’t—” he began.

I flipped the locket open.

With a sound like an earthquake, the chamber exploded into blazing white light.

The force of the spell threw me backwards onto the bed. The room spun sickeningly around me. Black sparks chased each other at the edges of my vision.

Get up. I had to get up. The assassin could be anywhere—could be closing in on Aric again at this instant, or deciding to come for me instead. I couldn’t lie here in a daze, even if my vision was swimming. I gritted my teeth and pushed myself up on my elbows.

And froze, bewildered.

I was face-to-face with a large, white… horse.

I blinked, certain I must be hallucinating. But as my vision cleared, the horse remained. Its large brown eyes rolled back in its head, showing the whites in an expression I recognized as panic. It blew out a huff of hay-scented air in my face and shied away from me, hooves clattering on the floor.

I didn’t have time to deal with magically summoned stallions. I rolled to my feet, nearly colliding with the horse. The floor lurched beneath my bare soles, and I hastily grabbed the bedpost to steady myself. Now of all times, I couldn’t afford weakness.

The assassin was slumped against the wall, head lolling. The force of Tatiana’s enchantment must have thrown them across the room. I had only a few moments before they recovered. I needed to find Aric and run for help before they could strike again. Where was the blasted man?

“Aric?” My voice was raw with fear.

No one answered. He must be hiding behind the horse. Or under the bed. Or perhaps he’d fled. Not exactly commendable, but I could overlook that given the circumstances. Or maybe the spell had stunned him, too?

The horse whinnied and pranced, blocking my view. I shoved at its flank in irritation, cursing again as it refused to budge. The horse’s sudden appearance in the bedchamber had to be Tatiana’s doing, but this was a very strange sort of protection indeed. What had my sister been thinking ? Was I supposed to ride out of danger? The beast didn’t even have a saddle, and a horse would be useless against an assassin. In fact, it was making things decidedly more difficult.

A groan. My gaze shot towards the sound.

The assassin was stirring. As I watched in dismay, they rolled to their hands and knees, groping across the floor for their weapon.

“Aric!” I shouted, abandoning subtlety. “Where are you?”

The horse butted me with its nose, nearly knocking me back onto the bed. I shoved it away again with an oath. Virtue of Serenity, now I was being attacked by a horse as well as an assassin.

-Get on my back.-

My mouth fell open. The voice had sounded inside my head. Clear. Oddly familiar. And, though I couldn’t have said how I knew, unmistakably coming from the horse.

Shock was making me imagine things, because horses simply did not talk. Especially not in my head.

The horse stamped a hoof against the floor with a resounding crack. - Get on my back. Now. Before both of us are killed.-

Practicality rushed back in. As unnerving as it was to be telepathically addressed by a magically materializing warhorse, the creature was right—I had to get out of here before the assassin recovered. Searching for Aric would only give our assailant time to kill us both.

I made an ungraceful lunge towards the horse, grabbed it by the mane, and scrambled onto its back.

A shudder rippled through the horse’s flanks. Drown me, it would be just my luck to have conjured a horse that couldn’t stand a rider, especially since I had neither bridle nor saddle. Tatiana could have considered that in her spell. I gripped its mane more tightly.

“Go,” I urged. “Get us out of here!”

The horse shuddered again. And then, nearly throwing me from its back, it reared. I shrieked and clung desperately to its neck, my legs sliding down its flanks. Glass chimed, catching the first light of morning, as the horse’s hoof smashed through the nearest window. My steed dropped to all fours and gathered itself, muscles bunching beneath me. I barely had time to finish screaming before it leaped straight through the shattered second-story window.

Broken glass snagged my dressing gown, ripping my sleeve. Fabric billowed around me. For a terrible moment, I was airborne. And then the horse’s hooves hit the ground, bone-shatteringly hard, and it was galloping into the dawn, leaving the castle behind.

We plunged through the trees of the arboretum I’d seen from my window. A cold, wet wind whipped my face, tangling my hair into knots and squeezing tears from my eyes. Frigid rain soaked through my dressing gown in an instant. I clung to the horse’s neck, my legs clamped around its sides. The world dissolved into a blur of snow and shadow. Branches loomed around me, bristling with needles. One snatched my hair, and I couldn’t stifle a cry of pain as strands ripped from my scalp.

Finally, the horse slowed and came to a standstill, sides heaving. I dared to lift my head and look around. We were alone in the midst of a dense, dark wood. Grey light paled the clouds above the trees; lingering patches of snow dotted the ground beside a few bold green shoots. The earth shone with the wet, chill glint of mud.

A shiver racked through me. I was wearing only a soaked dressing gown and a shift, and a Gilden spring was as cold as the depths of Damarian winter. I’d nearly died and I wasn’t yet out of danger. I was alone, weaponless, with only a horse for company—a large, regrettably white horse that glowed against the rain-shrouded trees like a lantern, betraying our location to anyone in pursuit.

And the assassin—who had sent them? Had they followed us out the window? The chill pierced all the way to my heart as I realized: they had come through my chambers. My retinue wouldn’t have let them pass without a fight, but I hadn’t heard a single warning sound. Julieta—Catalina—were they drugged? Dead? And Aric—what had happened to him?

Virtues, please let him be alive. I might despise the man, but I didn’t want him dead. Especially not when the peace between our countries depended on our union.

“Aric,” I muttered, talking to myself. “Where in the ocean’s hundred names are you?”

The horse shifted beneath me, making me hastily tighten my grip on its mane. And then that voice sounded in my head again. Smooth, melodic, and undeniably annoyed.

-Right here. Now get off my back.-

My jaw went slack. I must have hit my head during the fight, for now the horse was not only talking, but doing so in the voice of the man I’d just married.

-Did you not hear me? Get off my back.- The horse stamped a hoof. Earth splattered, and it shook itself, nearly unseating me again. - Ugh. I despise mud.-

I closed my mouth with an audible click. “A-Aric? Are you—a horse ?”

The horse turned its head to glare at me over its shoulder. His shoulder. The expression dissipated my doubt, though not my shock. That cold annoyance was definitely Aric’s, bizarre though it was to see it on an equine face.

-What do you think I look like? A chicken?- the horse demanded. - Now for the last time, get off my back before I buck you into this rotted mud.-

“Virtue of Patience. You could at least give me a moment to process the circumstances.”

I slid from the horse’s— Aric’s —back, wincing as my bare feet hit the frigid ground with a splash. Icy mud slid between my toes. My knees nearly gave way under me and, without thinking, I caught myself on the horse’s side. A shiver ran through his flanks, and I snatched my hand away.

I turned to look at him, my eyes narrowed. “You’re really my husband?”

-Regrettably. Unless you’ve managed to acquire a divorce in the last few hours without my knowledge?-

Yes, that was definitely Aric. And transforming him into the emblem of his own country did seem like exactly the sort of thing Tatiana would find diverting. I clutched my head in my hands, my fingers tangling in my sodden hair.

“This is impossible.” A hysterical laugh bubbled up and spilled out into the early morning air. “I’m married to a horse.”

The horse—Aric—stamped a hoof ( a hoof! ) alarmingly near my bare feet. Mud splashed onto the silk of my already ruined dressing gown. - Control yourself, wife . This is no laughing matter. This situation would be grave even if we weren’t fleeing an assassin.-

Right. The assassin. The thought was a cold bucket of water, dousing the flames of my laughter. “Who were they? Why did they try to kill you?”

Aric gave me a look that showed the whites of his eyes. - I think you know that better than I.-

It took me a moment to understand the implication. “Wait. You think I sent the assassin? I nearly got myself killed protecting you from them!”

-How very convenient.-

I was nearly speechless with rage. “It was hardly convenient! I’m cut, bruised, soaked, and I nearly lost my life. And besides, I entered this marriage in good faith. I’m not the sort of person who would have my husband murdered on my wedding night!”

-You wore a dagger to your own welcome ball.-

“For self-defense! Which was clearly well merited! How do I know that wasn’t your assassin?”

Aric snorted, indignant. - I would never assassinate my spouse in my bedchamber. Even one who forced me to marry them. It would ruin the sheets.-

“It would—” I sputtered. “Wait, what do you mean, forced you to marry—”

A cacophony of bells broke out in the distance, cutting my protest short. An alarm. Someone had discovered the assassination attempt.

Both our heads turned sharply in the direction of the noise. Lights were bobbing through the trees—the dull flickering orange of torches struggling against the rain, mixed with the paler glow of Adept-forged lanterns. A search party. And I would wager my life that the assassin had slithered into the searchers’ ranks, passing themself off as part of the castle household.

Aric’s head swung back to face me, though his ears remained turned towards the alarm bells.

-We don’t have time for this discussion now. Undo your spell before the assassin finds us.-

I winced. “I… don’t know how.”

Aric’s nostrils flared. They were really quite large nostrils. - What do you mean, you don’t know how? It was your spell!-

“It wasn’t my spell, actually.” I touched my hand to my throat. Miraculously, the locket had survived the breakneck journey through the woods. It hung from its chain, still open. “My sister made it for me. It was meant to be a protection device. I don’t really know how it works. I’m not the one with magical abilities, remember?”

Aric might have been a horse, but apparently he could still give me an entirely withering look.

“Fine. I’ll try my best to—to unhorse you.” I fumbled with the rain-slick locket. Since opening it had activated the spell, perhaps closing it would reverse the enchantment. My fingers were clumsy from the cold, but I managed to pinch the pendant between them.

-Wait—- Aric started.

I squeezed my eyes closed and clicked the locket shut.

No rush of air. No burst of light.

I cautiously opened my eyes to find myself still face-to-face with a large, annoyed, and entirely untransformed white stallion.

“One moment. I’ll try again.” With increasing urgency, I clicked the locket open and shut, open and shut.

Aric pawed impatiently at the muddy earth. - We have no time for this. Get on my back.-

“A moment ago you wanted me to get off—”

-Archives and indices, wife , just stop arguing and do as I say. Do you really want to explain to my guards why I’m a horse and you have blood on your shift? Assuming it’s my guards who find us first, and not the assassin.-

I had no argument. I shut my mouth. Aric lowered himself to his knees, muttering irritably about the mud all the while. I swung a leg over his back. Mounting him felt entirely different now that I knew he wasn’t an ordinary horse. My bare thighs touched his sides, and I wore nothing beneath my shift.

Heat rushed to my face. Thank the seas he couldn’t see my face. Or could he? His eyes were on the sides of his head. What was a horse’s vision like?

Virtue of Mercy. I was married to a horse.

Hysterical laughter threatened to spill out again. I clamped my lips closed on it. Aric was right: this wasn’t something to laugh about. It was only the exhaustion and shock making me react in unhinged ways.

Aric jolted to his feet. I gripped his mane, and we plunged deeper into the forest’s embrace.

“Where are we going?”

-You’ll see. Somewhere safe.- He paused. - I hope.-