look. Someone was on horseback, but the horse was galloping around erratically. I could see it was close to bucking the person off.
I raced out to the front porch, trying to see who would be running a horse around like that at this hour of the evening. Several of my guards noticed me running outside and came after me. They assumed it had to be some kind of intruder and began to cock their weapons. But as I looked closer I could see the rounded belly on the rider. It was Alicia.
I flew up my hands and ordered my men to stand down as I raced out after her. I yelled for one of them to fetch me a horse from the stables. That would be my only hope in catching up to this rogue creature before it threw Alicia off. But until they returned, I ran out to keep track of where they were. Finally, one of my men returned to deliver a horse to me. I was able to jump on and ride up alongside Alicia’s out of control horse. I stood a good chance of catching up to them in time, but the horse was galloping at full speed toward the tree line. I didn’t think Alicia would know how to keep low enough to avoid all the branches flying by while also keeping her grip on the saddle.
I rode as fast as I could after her, yelling for her all the way. As I grew closer, she seemed to be encouraging the horse to keep going. She was stubborn as always. She didn’t understand the danger she was in, and seemed to think me catching up to her would be even worse for her and her baby.
6
Alicia
My eyes slowly opened and a terrible, pounding pain instantly swelled in my head. It was enough to make me close them again, but panic rose in my chest. My heart pounded. I didn’t know where I was or what had happened, but I remembered enough to know that I needed to be afraid. The more I tried to retrace what steps brought me here, the harder the hurt set in.
My body moved before I could open my eyes again. My intuition told me I needed to be awake and alert. I needed to get away. But away from what?
Slowly my lids separated, forming two swollen slits. I expected there to be bright lights shining down on me, but it was only the blur of a faint lamp in the corner. I was in a room like the one I had been staying in before, but it seemed smaller and emptier. There was no wardrobe or bathroom door. Just a bed and a table, and four walls that felt like they were closing in on me. The sheets were stiff and cold, dampened from my own sweat, and they were tucked around me tight enough that it made it hard to move.
As I tried to gather my strength enough to break free of them and sit up, the memories started flashing back to me. The basement filled with unclaimed, prohibited, and probably stolen goods. My mad dash to find more. The stables. I remembered climbing on the horse and then...gunshots. The horse took off, rearing out of control. I did my best to calm him down, but everything I tried only made it worse. I wasn’t used to riding a horse, and the horse obviously wasn’t used to me. It threw me off, and everything went dark.
The memories made my panic grow, giving me the motivation I needed to jerk away from the sheets and swing my legs around to the floor. I expected to feel the worn-down wooden boards I had grown used to, but instead, there was something colder and harder. It was concrete - a strange flooring for a bedroom. But as I studied the bare walls and absence of windows, I quickly gathered this wasn’t meant to be a bedroom at all. This was something else. A hospital room, maybe? But no such luck. I recognized the wallpaper from other rooms in the Milano estate.
All at once, the door handle clattered. It was being unlocked from the outside, and soon an old woman came marching in.
“Oh, good! You’re awake!” she sang out, seeming too cheery.
She immediately placed down whatever was in her arms. My vision was still too blurry to make out the contents. She began ripping the dirty sheets from the bed and soon vanished