Chapter 200

She scowled as she stood. Her frown deepened when she discovered the head of the Guard smirking as they walked into the fray of the readying company. However, the unbearable urge to splatter someone across a wall lessened when they brought her a piebald mare to ride.

She mounted. The sky came closer, and it stretched forever above her, away and away to distant lands she’d never heard of. Matilda gripped the saddle horn. She was truly leaving Endovier. All those hopeless months, those freezing nights

. . gone now. She breathed in deeply. She knew—she just knew—that if she tried hard enough, she could fly from her saddle. That is, until she felt iron clamp around her arms.

It was Benjamin, fastening her bandaged wrists into shackles. A long chain led to his horse, where it disappeared beneath the saddlebags. He mounted his black stallion, and she considered leaping from her horse and using the chain to hang him from the nearest tree.

It was a rather large company, twenty all together.