Page 60 of Empire's Curse

Daiyu hurried down the streets, her gaze skating to the buildings and the sparse people in the streets. She needed to find the stables and someone who could take her out of here.

Glancing over her shoulder, her heart stopped. The six men at her table had left the inn and were now standing by the entrance. They looked around themselves as if looking for something—orsomeone—before one of them spotted her. He nudged to his companions and said something, and all of a sudden, they all turned to her.

Daiyu ripped her gaze away and rushed down the street, no longer caring about the horses or the stables or finding a way out.

They knew who she was.

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Or at the very least,according to Daiyu’s cloak, they thought she sided with the emperor. And if anything, they probably wanted to get rid of her because she had seen them—the rebels.

She heard a few shouts behind her, but none of that mattered anymore. She shoved through the streets, her shoulders and elbows colliding with others, but she barely paid attention to that. She sprinted to the edge of the village and entered the woods she had come from. Her worn-out feet, covered in thinned silk shoes, pounded the uneven, twig-ridden ground. Her breath streamed out behind her in streaks of white and the scenery blurred to trees and snow. Branches tugged through her hair and ripped through her clothes, but she kept running.

She didn’t dare turn around. Not even when she heard the curses and grunts of the men. Nor the familiar, metallic clang of a sword unsheathing from its scabbard.

Adrenaline pumped through her veins and all her exhaustion disappeared, overridden by the primal instinct to survive.

They had been drinking, so she had an advantage over them, right? They were likely clumsy right now and not expecting for her to run. She had a head start?—

An arrow whizzed past her face and buried itself into the trunk of a hollowed, dying tree. Daiyu suppressed a shriek and pushed herself faster.

“Get back here!”

Her thighs felt like they would split open and her eyes burned from the stinging, cold wind. She didn’t even know where she was headed. All she knew was that she had to outrun them somehow.

How had she gotten into this mess?

Why was this happening to her?

She was just a simple farm girl.

Daiyu kept running and running, her legs feeling like they would give out at any moment. Her lungs filled with fire and every breath seemed to be her last. More arrows missed her and struck the ground. That only pushed her harder, faster, until she felt like she would collapse. Until her vision was nothing but browns, whites, and blurs of arrows.

The men continued shouting, their voices growing closer with every passing minute.

One second, she was upright, sprinting with all her might, and the next, she crashed. She didn’t even realize what happened until she slammed into the ground, the air knocking out of her as she rolled against the packed earth. Excruciating pain radiated from her leg and when she shakily pushed herself to her elbows and looked down, her stomach twisted into knots. An arrow was jammed into her thigh, the arrowhead poking out to the front of her thigh. Blood seeped from the wound, staining her dress and dripping against the fresh snow beneath her.

The men were closer now, maybe a minute away. Daiyu hauled herself to her feet, her injured leg refusing to move. She bit her bottom lip to keep from groaning. Her thighs quivered, and she couldn’t think outside the white-hot throbbing of her leg. She limped forward, but the pain was too much and her body collapsed onto the blood-stained snow.

A strangled sob escaped from her as she dragged herself toward a tree. Right then, she noticed the glittering jade braceletadorned to her wrist. She had almost forgotten about it and its supposed magical properties. What had Feiyu told her about it?

If you’re really in a bind, try pouring your energy into it and it might help you.

She didn’t know what else to do, so she grabbed the beaded ornament and tried forcing her energy into it.

“Please, please,please!” Tears of frustration, panic, and pain ran down her cheeks and she squeezed her fingers over the beads until her hands were white and bloodless. Nothing happened, and she could hear the men approaching now, the snow crunching beneath their boots. “Please!”

It wasn’t working; the bracelet wasn’t helping, and it appeared like she would die here. Releasing a frustrated sob, she tried pulling herself upright again. Did Feiyu really give her a useless piece of jewelry? Or maybe she didn’t know how to use it properly? He shouldn’t have given her something she didn’t know how to use, she thought bitterly as she clawed the earth to yank herself forward.

The men were only a dozen feet away. All of their hurried impatience seemed to dissolve at the sight of her writhing on the ground, pinned with an arrow. She could even hear them chuckling and talking amongst themselves, but their words didn’t register to her. Not with the blood rushing to her ears and her tunneling vision toward the horizon.

She shouldn’t have run away. She should have stayed put in the fortress. She should have waited for a better opportunity to escape. She should have?—

Daiyu cradled her wrist to her chest, another sob ripping from her scratchy throat. “Please help! Please!” she whisper-cried. And for some reason, instead of thinking of Feiyu coming to rescue her, she thought of Muyang. If he were here, he wouldn’t have allowed anyone to injure her. He would have destroyed everyone in his path. He would have tortured these men for even daring to look at her.

In her moment of desperation, the person she wanted to saveher was a villainous, powerful man who would make these rebels suffer for putting her through this. The thought alone shattered something within her. Because Drakkon Muyang was many things, and she found that she preferred his darkness in that moment. She preferred the twisted, shadowy power he held. She wished more than anything in that moment for him to be here, toprotecther.

“Muyang, please,” she whispered through tears, “please save me.”

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