She ran. Blind with tears, she felt her way through the crowd, desperate to put as much distance between herself and that room as she could.

“Thief!” Glass yelled after her, “Stop her, thief!”

Hands grabbed at her clothes and she jerked free with a snarl of torn fabric. She fought through the press of bodies, crying out in relief when she saw a break in the masses. She burst free, into the clear space. People booed and jeered. Several of the crowd began hurling things at her. A procession of mounted figures was making their way steadily towards her and she looked, stunned, with her mouth hanging open. The prince had actually come.

“Get her out the way!” somebody shouted.

At the head of the procession rode armoured men, bearing the crown’s gold and azure. Royal guard. The lead guard shouted as he saw Vision, and sped his horse. She turned to run again, to escape back into the crowd, but at a word from the guard the people bunched together, closing the way to her. Crying in earnest, she ran as fast as she could down the corridor of people, but she couldn’t outrun horses. As the thundering of hooves told her that she was caught, she turned. Hooves came perilously close to her face as the horse reared, before its rider reined it in. She fell backwards and looked up at them bleakly. She wondered at her ability to still be frightened. It seemed as though there were nothing worse that could happen to her, after what she had just escaped from, and yet she was still terrified. The rebels were bad, but the idea of being bled by the crown filled her with such abject horror that she had to clench her jaw to keep from vomiting.

The guard that had chased her down hauled her roughly to her feet and regarded her coldly. She was mostly naked, she realised as she looked down at herself, and the mottled bruises left over from when Fox had hit her were overlayed with the angry red of her fresh injuries.

“Thief!” called someone in the crowd. The cry was taken up by other voices.

“Thief! Thief!”’

She hung her head. The king of Apera was largely resented by the people he ruled; but, the prince was popular. He was widely understood to be charismatic, fair and wise for his years. The hope of most people in the slums rested on him. For anyone else in House Arsyde, the crowd would have been contrary. For the prince, they would gladly hand her over. The guard bound her wrists. The rope was rough and tore at her skin, while the movement strained her injured elbow. She gasped at the pain, feeling a little dizzy.

“Stop,” commanded a male voice.

The guard stopped. Another horse cantered nearby, and its rider dismounted. He was outfitted the same as the guard who had apprehended her, but the man who’d bound her bowed his head. Admittedly, she knew very little about the military, but it struck her as odd. The new man frowned at her. He was as tall as Fox, though slighter in the chest. Blond, and blue-eyed, he looked young to be a high-ranked soldier.

“Mage Amaya?” he asked.

She blinked. The guard holding her did a double take.

“Untie her,” snapped the younger man.

He did. The rope snarled over her skin once more and it was too much. She wobbled on her feet, and then the world went dark.