Alyssa thundered into a small clearing on her horse. The thrill of the hunt spiked through her veins as she trained her bow, rose in the stirrups, and aimed. Movement caught her eye, and it took only a moment for her mind to process that what she saw was not an animal. A sense of danger made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Their people were not dressed in black, she thought.
The hunt would soon end when the guests reached their quota of allotted animals that her father allowed for this insane dash through the royal forests. As long as everyone kept to their heading, there was no chance that someone could mistake them for an animal, but the man raising his bow at her was not on horseback.
He was no royal, and his dark forest clothes bore no insignia. Instinct made her
