Bundled into an oonat robe with a veil over her face, Jess was taken from the palace and hurried through the streets of the city below. She’d been into the city a couple of times before, but those journeys, in a comfortable carriage surrounded by guards and warriors, bore no relation to being frog-marched through the back streets, only able to get snatched glimpses of where she was through the thick material covering her face.
She tried to remember the twists and turns they took, and how many paces, but before long she was hopelessly lost. Through it all, the hard hand on her arm gripped cruelly, painfully, but thankfully there was no longer a blade at her throat.
But she could hear, and when they hit a crowded area she tried to struggle, opening her mouth to cry out.
Before she could,
