For a while, the trees are silent. I wonder if they can sense what I am and if they’re as wary of me as I am of them. Fortunately, we travel too quickly for the branches to snag us, and the roots are thin so close to the bank. But it’s not a pace Yandor can keep up indefinitely.

We’ve made good distance, several hours into the woods, before the hairs rise on the backs of my arms.

The trees groan, the snap of bark echoing in our wake. Yandor makes an alarmed sound. I do my best to settle him, to encourage us both to be brave. The shadows seem to grow, racing from branch to branch, obscuring their movement. Surely a trick of the moonlight and our haste.

Yandor pants loudly. We slow down so he can drink from my waterskin, but then the roots circle his legs, and he takes off again in a panic. With every passing hour, the trees press closer, slowly eliminating the narrow bank that brackets the rocky waterbed.

A branch drops into our path. I cry out, but Yandor roars, snapping razor-sharp teeth at the offending limb. Jaw tight, I cling to the reins as Yandor bravely charges on. I ride low on his back, my cheek pressed to the smooth scales of his neck. We tear through grasping branches that scratch at my face.

“We’re going to survive this,” I tell him, even as his foot slips briefly, nearly pitching me from the saddle. “We’re not going to die here. I won’t allow it.” I cannot let my fears gain control again, even though they’ve been gnawing at me from the moment I realized what I did to that knife thrower.

Despite the odds, despite that I never quite believed what Ronin said about my craft, some desperate part of me wanted it to be true. So that I could make a difference. So that I could be someone. And for what? Recognition? Prestige? I tell myself I want these things, but my heart knows the truth.

It is not from the world that I need acknowledgment of my worth.

Pressure rises in my chest, dangerously close to a sob, but I swallow it down. I have not cried for myself in years, and now seems a foolish time to give in.

Yandor makes a pained, wheezing sound as he leaps high over a nest of roots converging on the bank. I kick one aside and tear at another with my hands, snapping it free before flinging it into the water. Then Yandor’s leg is dragged out from under him. I gasp as we go down.