Fortunately, the gooey demons didn't discriminate between boots and hooves, making the soldiers on horseback struggle just as much as they galloped through the mud after her.

Then the sound of swords clinking against armor stopped, and all she could hear were her own gasping breaths.

Sonia looked back as she ran, but the soldiers didn't appear to be moving. One of the them had dismounted, crouching beside his horse to examine a new twist in its ankle joint. Sonia had forgotten how breakable horses could be. She thanked her luck, slowing her sprint to a run. If she was truly lucky, the soldier with the uninjured horse wouldn't continue the chase.

And her luck was true. The next time she looked back, the other soldier had turned around, riding back towards the castle. She was safe. She had also reached the strip of forest that separated the royal city from the northern farm towns, meaning she had some cover to hide in if the soldiers decided to continue the chase.

The question now was where to go. They knew where she lived, who her parents were, and that her closest friends still sat in their dungeons. Even if her body was free, she was psychologically trapped.

Sonia paused to lean against a tree, her lungs aching with every breath. She wanted nothing more than to leave the kingdom entirely and wander into some neighboring territory to restart her life. She knew how to do farm work; that was all anyone needed to know to scrape by. Gillian and Chess would be fine. They would rot in the dungeons, but they wouldn't starve to death like some of their neighbors had over the long winter. Even if a heavy rainfall caused the dungeons to flood, drowning would at least kill them faster than the wasting misery of starvation.

She couldn't leave them. Sonia hated herself for even thinking about it. Abandoning her friends would make her just as bad as her brother. No, it would make her worse. She could tell by the way the King looked at his guard that he would do anything for him. She wished she could say the same when she thought of her own friends. But she didn't want to go back, not when she had only just escaped.

The squelch of horse hooves in the mud saved her from questioning her morals further. Sonia jumped off the path, cursing herself for standing in the open as she dove into the underbrush. The sound had come from the wrong direction for it to have been the castle soldiers, or at least she thought it had. She could no longer remember which direction was which as she lay face down in the mud and leaves.

To her right, the hoof steps grew louder until they seemed close enough to splash her with mud.

Then they stopped.

Sonia didn't dare look up to check whether they had seen her. They could have only seen a flash of movement as she had jumped off the road. She could have been a rabbit, or more likely a deer given her height. Maybe if she tried hard enough, she could make herself invisible. Her brother had magic, so hers could just be dormant. She just had to believe.

Idealism was pointless. The rough metal of a chainmail glove scraped her back as a soldier gripped her shirt and jerked her to her feet. Sonia spat mud when she saw the people who had found her, mostly because she had mud in her mouth and it tasted terrible, but also from surprise.

These were not the King's soldiers. They were strangers, and their carriage looked unnatural among the trees. Swirls of white and blue flowed along every wooden surface like snow clouds and through some act of pointless magic the mud had only stained the wagon wheels, leaving the remainder of the clouds pristine. The soldiers' metal armor flowed in the same cloudlike manner, except their décor more closely resembled evening thunderclouds with swirls of deep purple and black on every disc. The soldiers Sonia had just fled from would have looked pitiful in comparison, and as the carriage door opened, Sonia realized August would look pitiful in comparison, too.

A queen rested within the snow cloud carriage. She didn't need to announce herself or wear a crown for Sonia to know her status. Her movements were delicate yet powerful as she beckoned to the soldier to bring Sonia closer. Robes of silver and gold rippled along her form, her cheeks dusted in the same colors so that she glimmered even in the dim light beneath the forest canopy. Sonia felt the mud begin to harden on her own cheeks; she hadn't so much as seen a bath since her arrival in the dungeons.

"Do you have the power to make gold or is all that just to look pretty?" The words tumbled from Sonia's mouth before she could think. She shouldn't speak before spoken to. Especially not to a queen. She felt her face burn and hoped the mud would hide it.

The Queen smiled, to Sonia's relief. "I try to look nice when I meet with my neighbors, but I have no magical power. Magicians are half-demons, and we welcome no such impurity in my nation. But let me introduce myself and apologize for frightening you off the path. I am Queen Thalia of the South." She lowered her head in a bow.

Sonia copied the gesture as she processed the Queen's words. Her kingdom had to be religious if they believed magicians were demons. A land where magicians didn't rule sounded like heaven to Sonia, but if they didn't "welcome" magicians, she couldn't help but wonder what they did to children who developed magic. She decided not to test her luck by disagreeing, switching to a lighter topic instead, "If you think looking nice will help you deal with the King, you'll be at a loss. He's in love with his guard, and his guard's a guy."

Thalia's eyebrows rose in surprise. "So he courts the devil in more ways than one."

Sonia attempted a half-smile in response, too afraid to respond in case she gave away her thoughts. At least she now knew which kingdom to avoid when she eventually fled.

The Queen leaned forward, her long black hair rippling like a waterfall from the movement. She examined Sonia with curiosity, now, as if she had seen something useful in her. Sonia didn't want to be useful; she wanted to leave.

"Are the social lives of royalty common knowledge here?" the Queen asked.

Sonia debated the best answer to make the Queen leave her alone. She needed to seem useless and common. She settled for sounding like a town gossip, barely restraining herself from cringing as she spoke, "Not really, that's just a rumor. It's a neat one, though. I heard all the royal magicians pierce their belly buttons, too. Diamond piercings are for the highest ranks."

The Queen smiled at her, but it wasn't the same friendly smile she had greeted Sonia with. Above the smile, her eyes glared. "You don't fool me. I don't need magic to recognize a liar."

"I'm not lying," Sonia sputtered. She took a step back, running into the soldier still standing behind her.

The Queen squinted at her, as if her eyes could carve the truth from Sonia's soul. Sonia knew the Queen didn't have magic, but she couldn't help but brace herself for earthquakes or fire or whatever else a magician would have thrown at her. Though she knew from experience now that she could do nothing to protect herself from mind control. With a flick of his wrist, her brother could have wiped her mind clean and sent her happy and ignorant back to her home town. When the Queen leaned back, Sonia flinched.

"You were running away from the royal city, if my sense of direction serves me correctly." The Queen tapped her chin as she spoke, a smile curving her lips. "So I would assume you have much to fear in this kingdom. If you tell me what you know about your King, I will give you safe passage to my own realm." When Sonia's expression remained wary, she adjusted her statement, "I can also give you safe passage beyond my realm."

Sonia tried to read the Queen's face, then looked to her soldiers when she found nothing useful there. Unfortunately, the soldiers remained anonymous and ominous behind their thundercloud helmets. If she were talking to anyone else, she would have liked the direction conversation had gone. She had found a way to save her friends and escape the kingdom, and she wouldn't even have to risk her life. And yet by the way the Queen smiled, she felt like she was making a deal with the devil.

Sonia took a deep breath. "If you can rescue my friends from the castle dungeons, I'll tell you everything I know."

"Of course I can help your friends." The Queen's voice had become soothing, like a mother calming a toddler. The hair on the back of Sonia's neck rose.

Despite her instinct to run for her life, Sonia responded, "We have a deal."

~