Willow
Heartbeat pounding in my ears, I crashed through the forest. Behind me, the redheaded warrior snarled, and I darted into the thick brush, barefoot. The friar didn’t like to spend money on things for the orphans, and my feet became calloused from going without shoes every summer. I’d longed to run these woods. A few months before Hazel disappeared, she and Sage and I had started racing one another, practicing for the day we would escape.
“Bad idea, lass,” the warrior growled down my neck. I shrieked and dodged around a tree, ducking under brambles. I heard Leif cursing and the rending of fabric. I’d better get away, for, now, the punishment he promised me would be more severe.
My course zigzagged through the forest until I burst out onto a wagon road. My feet pounded down the path
