Being thrown to the wolves is a death sentence.
Adalia knows that all too well, since she witnessed her own father being slaughtered in that same unmerciful way.
Living life as a meek slave in a kingdom full of royals, Adalia has no rights and is tr...
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The forest used its weaponry against the young woman it held in its grasp. Rocks cut her soft flesh open, branches tried to snare her, thorns tried to break her.
She was so flustered, so frantic, so desperate, that she didn't realize her blistered feet had split open and was leaving a steady trail of bright scarlet along the snow. Her wavy red hair was all over the place, blinding her and whipping in the breeze.
Somewhere along the way, she found herself lost in the noise of the barking dogs behind her, and her heart pounded loud in her ears as if cheering her on to keep up the fight, to keep going and to escape the threats that awaited her.
She muffled her cry of pain when the terrain became rockier, where the snow was more shallow and gave way to sharp rocks that slit open even the most calloused parts of her feet.
Each shallow breath she took burned her throat and froze her lungs, her heart was burning and her lungs were drowning. Adrenaline was pushing her on, but adrenaline was also killing her.
Her eyes danced frantically around, latching onto the shadows the trees produced and she struggled to decipher which image was just a shadow and which image was actually a being wanting her to be cast into endless torture.
Her muscles burned from being over-strained, it was much too difficult to keep up a quick pace in thick snow that seemed to hold onto her feet each time she went to take a step. Her running soon turned into jogging, then finally, walking.
When she could run no more, she gave one last attempt to save herself. She knew the dogs were gaining on her, and she gave a final cry as she flung herself into a nearby tree.
The bark was rough, the texture of the tree scraped up her knees and hands as she sought out to climb the heavy, snow-capped branches. Sap stuck to her skin and tangled in her hair, and she used muscles in her upper body that she didn't know she had as she pulled herself up and through the mess of branches that threatened to snap.
She quickly found that she didn't favor heights, as she was quite high off of the ground. But at the moment, it felt like she couldn't get far enough from the dogs that were yipping below her. They were at the base of the tree now, clawing and jumping at the tree.
The branches were thick, and, for the most part, they hid her from view of those below her.
But a nagging voice in her mind knew. It knew that it was only a matter of time before she would be ripped from her frozen fortress.
The hounds were giving her away, because surely their owners would come crawling up after her - after the murderer who slaughtered their prince.
Voices boomed around her, the nearing shouts of male voices were starting to surround her. It echoed through the branches that caged her and she shivered.
