Nobody was watching the small woman with a dislocated thumb and a plan.
The one holding the leash was two paces in front of her, walking like he was on a Sunday stroll.
Guinevere let her wrists fall open and slid the rope off in one silent motion. Then she yanked the leash with her entire bodyweight in a single brutal pull.
Hard. Both hands minus a thumb.
The line snapped taut and whipped him off his feet like a sled dog hitting the end of a tether. He went flat on his back in the pine needles with a sound that was half grunt and half outrage.
The two guards flanking her turned towards the sound.
Mistake.
Guinevere pivoted and drove her boot up into the groin of the one on her left with enough force that his knees buckled before his brain had processed what had happened to him.
The one on her right was already lunging. She did not wait. She spun on the balls of her feet, using the turn for momentum, and kicked him in exactly the same place, at exactly the same angle, with exactly the same result.
Two armored men folded at the waist like matching bookends.
"Sorry."
She was not sorry.
She ran in the opposite direction at the speed of a woman who knew this was her one and only chance.
The iron-eyed stranger made a sound behind her that was half shock and half delight.
The leash was still wrapped around her waist, trailing behind her like a tail, but she did not have the time to untangle it yet. She needed cover and she had about three seconds before the men behind her remembered how to breathe.
She hit the tree line at a dead sprint and vanished into it.
"Well." The iron-eyed stranger's voice carried through the trees unhurried and entertained. "That was unexpected."
He was watching her go. Not running yet. Just watching. The way a man watches a very expensive horse he has just paid for and is curious to see how fast it actually is.
Guinevere pulled the rope tailing behind her and unknotted it as she ran. The rope belt was still on her, but the leash at least was separated.
She wove between two pines so close together that her shoulder clipped the bark on the right side.
Behind her she heard a dense, satisfying crack as the first soldier to recover came charging after her at full speed and met the second one doing the exact same thing from a slightly different angle.
Armor hit armor. Helmet hit helmet. Two men who should have communicated with each other collapsed in a tangle of limbs and profanity at the base of the pine she had just squeezed through.
She did not stop to appreciate it, already twenty feet away.
A shadow moved fast through the canopy above her.
The iron-eyed stranger had stopped being entertained.
She had not factored in that dragon speed in human form was not merely above wolf speed. It was meaningfully, catastrophically above it. Her mental calculation of how much time she had just updated itself downward in a violent way.
Whoops.
She cut hard to the left, using a fallen log as a pivot, and sprinted down a slope thick with ferns.
The air next to her went cold.
One second there was forest. The next second there was the mage, materialized out of nothing two feet from her elbow like smoke taking the shape of a man, hand already reaching for her throat.
Guinevere did not have time to think. She threw the leash at his masked face. His gloved hands came up on instinct, catching the rope. His entire body froze for three full seconds, and his mask tilted down looking at the rope in pure confusion, like she'd just handed him a baby without warning.
She did not question it. She ran.
She put a massive oak between herself and the slope and dropped into a crouch, fingers flying at the knot around her waist. The rope belt came loose after three tries. She coiled it fast into one hand, because she had seen what throwing a rope at a wizard's face could accomplish and she was not about to discard a tool that had just saved her life.
Above her, a shadow passed over the canopy. Big. Winged. Moving slow and deliberate, circling the pines.
She glanced up through a gap in the branches and saw a red dragon.
Guinevere had no idea if red was good news or very bad news. For all she knew, red was the color worn by men who kidnapped princesses for sport.
Assume the worst. Add it to the list. Keep moving.
She flattened against the oak and held her breath.
Through the trees, unhurried, conversational, came the voice of the iron-eyed stranger.
"Come out, come out, little girl. Three of my men cannot have children today because of you. The least you owe me is a name."
Guinevere did not move.
"You cannot outrun me. I promise you this with no malice. I am simply faster than you. What you can do is come out with dignity and have a conversation with me about who you are and why my mage's divinations led him directly to your hair in a Drakencrest forest. I will even let you keep the rope. As a trophy."
He was close. Maybe thirty feet. Maybe less.
She pushed off the oak and ran.
His footsteps broke into motion behind her the instant hers did. She heard him laugh. An actual, delighted laugh, like a man who had been bored for a decade and had just remembered what fun felt like.
Guinevere tore through the underbrush. Her boots skidded on pine needles.
She risked one glance back and saw him thirty paces behind her, closing fast.
She whipped the coiled rope off her shoulder and spun around to throw it at his face.
The rope hit him square across the mouth.
For the second time in under a minute, a man who should have been the most dangerous thing in the forest stalled for a full heartbeat with both hands up, catching a rope he had not expected. Guinevere watched his expression flicker through the exact same wife-handed-me-her-purse confusion the mage had worn.
She did not ask why it had worked twice. She did not have the luxury.
She ran.
Thirty seconds.
That was how long it lasted.
She did not make it to the ridge.
The iron-eyed stranger closed the last ten feet in two strides, slammed into her from behind like a battering ram, and took her to the ground with the full weight of a dragon shifter moving at dragon speed.
Her broken hand caught the fall, and her ribs did not forgive her for it. Her face drove into the pine needles and her vision went briefly, spectacularly white.
He flipped her onto her back in one motion and pinned her there, one knee across her hips, one hand around her throat.
"I could burn you," he said conversationally. His iron eyes searched her face with an intensity that had nothing to do with violence and everything to do with hunger. "I could open you up right here and see exactly what makes you tick. I have done it before. It is a very informative process."
Guinevere could not breathe well enough to answer. That was probably for the best. Whatever she would have said would have only made him more interested.
"But you." His free hand came up, and he traced the line of her jaw slowly with his thumb. "You have made yourself far too interesting for that. That is your fault entirely. I want to know what you are. I want to know who you are."
"And I am going to keep you. Just so we are clear on the arrangement moving forward."
A voice cut across the clearing from thirty feet away. Warm. Dry. Familiar.
"Kael. Get your hand off the woman before I make you famous for a very embarrassing reason."