He was running towards me.
I knew it.
He was going to come for me. He would take me back to them.
I had come to far.
In that split second, terror flooded me. My heart pounded so hard it drowned out the chaos from the western walls—the howls, the clashes, the horns. The guard's boots echoed up the stairwell, getting louder, closer. I had no time. No choice.
I jumped.
The fall happened in an instant.
Air pulsed past my ears as my stomach lurched into my throat.
My arms flailed uselessly as my cloak flapped.
Then impact arrived, harder than anything I had imagined.
My feet felt it first
My right ankle folded under me with a sickening crack that echoed up my leg.
Pain detonated—white-hot, blinding, like someone had driven a red-hot spike through the bone and kept twisting. My left knee slammed into a log, It's gaments tore with a pop I felt it more than I heard it.
Splinters from the wood ripped into my palms, my forearms, my hip as I rolled.
