The Crown cannot Help You

Chapter 4: The Horse

Audelia eventually opened her eyes to find she had a jacket slung over her shoulders and was levitating from the floor.

She almost let out a scream before a large hand circled her face and covered her mouth.

"Great to see you awake again, Princess." His gruff voice grumbled from behind her.

She shook her face free from his grubby hand and stared down at the reason she was floating.

"Her name is Hannah." He announced again before giving her a light stroke.

The horse was a beautiful black colour, and she couldn't help but warm up to her immediately as she neighed at the sound of her name.

"Hannah is an awful name for a horse." Audelia finally responded.

Flynn ignored her and gave the horse another light pat. "Well, that's not very nice, is it, Hannah?"

Audelia crossed her arms like a child and scowled. "Yeah? Well, neither is murdering and kidnapping, so I guess we are all a little mean these days."

Flynn scoffed at her reply, but in a way that someone might have mistaken it for a laugh.

Audelia finally took her attention away from the horse and glanced around at her surroundings. She didn't recognise anything and didn't know how she got here from the palace that she knew so well. "What happened?" She finally muttered.

"Well, after you passed out on me, I stitched up that cut of yours and stuck you on a horse."

The mention of her cut made her thigh start to throb. She looked down and reached a finger down to lightly brush against a rather terrible line of stitches stuck across her skin.

He placed his hand over hers and pulled it away. "Best not to touch it; you wouldn't want to aggravate those fresh stitches."

"Did you at least sanitise it?" Audelia growled as she continued inspecting her poorly attended wound.

"Yes. My work may not be neat, but it won't kill you." He sighed, thinking about how dramatic she is. "I assumed you got that from fighting the men sent to kill you."

Audelia furrowed her brow. "You know about them?"

"Of course, I do, I was waiting outside to make sure you didn't die."

Audelia didn't even know how to respond to that, so she didn't. Instead, she pulled the jacket tighter around her and tried to warm herself up, all whilst still looking for a way to escape.

Eventually, Audelia thought she had a good enough plan to make a getaway and began putting it into action.

"I do not feel so good." She whispered as she let herself fall to the side.

He caught her in time and immediately took her words as something being wrong. So, he pulled the horse to a stop and slid off its back, helping Audelia get down too.

"What's wrong?" He asked as gently as he could manage, but he was starting to get extremely frustrated with this situation as he'd gone into it thinking it would be an easy job.

Audelia, who was now lying against the floor, kept her eyes close and waited for the right moment.

"Hey, are you breathing?" He suddenly yelled in a panic and bent his head down to her face.

The moment she thought he was close enough, she threw her head into his. The hit was hard enough that he stumbled backwards slightly, giving her a look of confusion.

This left her enough space to scramble back to the horse and attempt to get back on.

"Well, that wasn't very princess-like." She heard him growl just as she jumped onto the horse's back.