POV: Nova
Nova was running before she was fully awake.
The dream had ripped her out of sleep like a hand grabbing her collar Ash, the youngest, small and shaking in his trapped wolf form, his human eyes looking out from a wolf's face, calling her name in a voice she couldn't hear because the dream had stolen the sound. She had sat up in her cot in the servants' quarters gasping, heart slamming, and had known immediately, the way she always knew, the way the fragile thread connecting her to her brothers tugged like a fishing line with something desperate on the other end.
Something was wrong.
She didn't stop to put on proper boots. She shoved her feet into her work shoes, grabbed her cloak from the hook, and slipped out of the palace through the kitchen door before the first kitchen maid had even started the morning fires. The pre-dawn sky was the color of a bruise, purple and grey and barely lit, and the cold hit her face like a flat palm.
She ran.
