>>Aelin
The air was thick with panic—screams, wails, the thunder of feet slamming stone floors. I pushed through them all, my heart racing like a war drum.
"Princess!" Ariston's voice bellowed behind me, but I didn't stop. I couldn't.
Bodies pressed against each other in blind desperation, and his voice grew more distant with every second. I glanced back only once—just long enough to see him being shoved sideways by the tide of people trying to get away.
"Princess! Don't! Wait!!" He reached for me, fighting the crowd like a man caught in a rising flood, but I had already surged ahead.
I was smaller. Faster. And I had something no one else in this stampede had—a direction that led toward danger, not away from it.
