Schemes

The night was young and shrouded in a hazy gray, a thin veil of clouds obscuring the comforting light of the stars. Fable's paws pounded the frozen earth as we chased the fleeting shadows of Luke and Jessia through the snow-dusted hills and treacherous mountain passes.

The biting autumn wind whipped at our backs, slicing through my dress and tugging my hair into crimson swirls. Flurries danced from the twilight sky like falling stars, settling on my hair and clothes only to be swept away by the relentless gusts.

I shivered, hunching low over Fable's back, my knuckles white as I gripped his fur. It wasn't the cold that chilled me—my wards kept the worst of it at bay—but a gnawing sense of guilt and unease that twisted my stomach into knots. The memory of Elise's hurt expression and R'lissea's panicked face when I agreed to accompany Luke clung to me like the morning's shadows.