Morwen's heart was hammering so hard that she could feel it in her fingertips, in her temples, and in the spaces between her ribs where her lungs tried and failed to draw a full breath.
She stared at the armored body lying on the floor just five paces away and watched a slowly expanding pool of blood form beneath it. Five paces. The length of a dining table or the distance between the fence rail and the practice yard where she'd watched her father train. It was nothing. It was the distance between being alive and … And dying on a knight's sword… And she hadn't even had time to scream.
