The forest was still dripping from the night's storm when Hyacinth stopped running. Her lungs burned, her skirts torn by brambles, her fingers streaked with mud. The silence of dawn pressed around her — heavy, immense, and filled with the sound of her own trembling breath.
She turned once, half expecting to see torchlight behind her. But there was nothing. Only the endless trees and the fading echo of thunder.
Hyacinth had escaped.
She sank to her knees beside a stream, gasping for air, and dipped her shaking hands into the cold water. Her reflection trembled in the ripples — a pale, frightened girl with eyes too old for her age.
The memory of the manor still clung to her: the shouting, the sound of hooves in the courtyard, the Duchess's voice like steel. And above it all, Hakeem's desperate cry — her name swallowed by rain.
She pressed her hand against her heart as if to quiet its pounding. "Please," she whispered, "let him be safe."
For a while she simply sat there, listening to the forest breathe. Then, as the light began to grow, she stood and followed the stream.
Hours passed. The path grew wider, the trees thinner. She found an abandoned cart by the roadside and scavenged a bit of cloth to wrap around her shoulders. Her once-white apron was now the color of earth.
When the road finally appeared — a narrow, rutted trail cutting through the hills — she felt the first true pang of freedom. Terrifying and beautiful all at once.
She walked until her legs ached. By midday, she reached a small town whose wooden signs leaned wearily under the weight of rain. Smoke curled from chimneys, mingling with the scent of wet hay and baking bread.
She hesitated at the edge of the square, uncertain how to act among strangers.
"Morning, miss," said a man unloading sacks of flour from a wagon. He gave her a kind but curious look. "You've come far, haven't you?"
"A little," she murmured, keeping her eyes down.
He nodded toward the bakery. "They might have work inside, if you're looking to earn your supper."
She thanked him and hurried on.
Inside the bakery, the air was warm and thick with the smell of sugar. The baker's wife, a stout woman with kind eyes, took one look at Hyacinth and said, "You've the look of someone running from ghosts, child. Don't tell me their names, just wash up and help me knead."
Hyacinth managed a smile — small, grateful. She worked silently until evening, her hands steadying with the rhythm of dough and breath. When the baker's wife offered her bread and a place to sleep in the loft, she nearly wept.
That night, as she lay beneath a thin quilt, she stared up at the rafters and listened to the rain beginning again on the roof.
Her thoughts drifted to Hakeem — to his eyes in the candlelight, the way his hand had trembled when he touched hers at the gate. Was he safe? Did he regret helping her?
She closed her eyes, whispering into the dark, "I'll come back for you. Someday."
Sleep took her with the faintest trace of a smile.
---
Days became weeks.
Hyacinth remained in the town, working quietly, earning her keep. The townsfolk accepted her without question; they called her Anna, the name she'd given herself the night she arrived.
She learned to bake, to barter, to mend torn sleeves. She spoke little, listened much, and every now and then, when news arrived from the north, she would pause her work, heart pounding, searching for any mention of the Mickelsons.
There were whispers — rumors of scandal, of a servant girl who vanished, of a noble son confined to his quarters. But the stories changed with every telling, twisted by distance and gossip.
Still, each retelling carried one truth: the Mickelson family had begun to fracture.
Sometimes, in the quiet hours before dawn, Hyacinth would slip from the loft and walk down to the river. She'd sit there in her borrowed cloak, watching the stars fade into morning.
She missed him — not the wealth, not the silk, not the forbidden thrill — but the person he had been when they were alone. The man who had looked at her as though she were more than a servant, more than a secret.
One morning, she found a wild rose growing at the riverbank. Its petals were pale pink, soft and trembling in the breeze. She plucked it carefully and tucked it behind her ear.
For the first time, she didn't feel like she was running.
---
Far away, in the great manor on the hill, Hakeem stood by his window and stared at the same dawn. The fields glistened with dew, and the horizon burned with light.
He didn't know why he felt lighter that morning, only that something within him whispered that she was alive — that somewhere beyond the walls of duty and disgrace, Hyacinth had found the sky again.
He pressed his palm to the glass, eyes closed. "Be safe," he murmured. "Just be safe."
And though no one heard, the wind outside the manor carried the words away — over fields, through forests, across miles of quiet road — until, by some small miracle, it brushed the cheek of a girl kneeling by a river miles away, who smiled for no reason she could name.