LYRA
I couldn't stay in the hedges forever, every second I stayed pressed against the cold damp earth with thorns in my skin was a second the territory woke further around me.
I lifted my head carefully and looked through the hedge gap toward the courtyard. The guard who had passed earlier was gone, his rotation carrying him to the far side of the grounds.
The courtyard stretched ahead of me with open stone ground, torch posts burning low at the end of their night, the eastern wall rising at the far end with the treeline visible just beyond it.
I pushed through the outer edge of the hedge slowly, branches dragging across my shoulders and catching in my hair with small insistent pulls that I ignored. My forearm scraped against something thorned on the way out and the wound from earlier flared hot and immediate, a sharp breath escaping me before I could stop it.
I pressed my lips together and breathed through my nose.
Then I was through.
