Something tugged at her right ankle and the world blurred. The hard-packed earth rushed up and white pain shot through her skull like a thousand arrows. Hot blood bubbled out of her nose, spilling over her lips and into her mouth. Her palms stung where they’d slammed into the ground. She lay there in a daze, chest heaving, speckled light lancing across her vision, before she rolled to one side. Legs shaking, she got back to her feet, hunched over, gasping and spitting bits of dirt. She looked around, sure she’d tripped over something, but there was nothing there. No tree branches, no large rocks poking through the mossy earth—just empty, howling air as far as she could see. She took one step, then another, but at her second step something tightened at her ankle.

Anji kicked out her right foot, and the tug increased. She tried to step forward, away from the camp still visible not two hundred feet away, and something pulled on her ankle like a rope lashed to stone. She tottered for balance and nearly fell over again before righting herself. Her nose was throbbing now, her vision still clouded with pain.

Shit.

She gathered her shirt into a bundle at the hem and pressed it gingerly to her bleeding nose, cold air clawing at her stomach. She needed to get back to the fire, back to the horse. Perhaps she could break this tether, whatever it was, at a full gallop? Would it simply rip her leg off? She’d chance a leg if it meant getting the hell out of here.

Anji palmed the left pocket of her trousers, missing the familiar lump of coin she’d kept there for nine years, so close at hand. The last remnant of her mother, and she’d left it behind. Guilt swam in her gut at the thought of her father’s dagger—also forgotten.

Had she been in such a rush to leave that she’d forgotten her only remaining links to her parents? What would she have done when she’d realized, some miles distant from the Hawk, that she’d left the dagger and coin behind? Not so many nights ago she’d been curled in her little cot, her father’s coat bundled like a pillow, breathing in the boiled leather, tears pouring silently down her cheeks. She’d been so desperate, so foolish and pigheaded, that she’d nearly resigned herself to that true loneliness, the kind she’d cried herself to sleep fearing for close to a decade. She set her jaw as she trudged back.

The camp lay undisturbed, the only evidence of her presence the empty cup she’d used to dose herself with poison. A thin trickle of silver smoke wafted from the smothered coals, spiraling into the relentless wind. The mare gave her a bored, one-eyed glance and nickered.