Escape and Survival
They fled through forests drenched in rain, Edward crying until her arms trembled. Rowan bled from wounds he refused to treat. They hid in a ruined mill, then a forest hut, then a monastery—only for the duke’s soldiers to descend again.
Death stalked them.
Rowan fought with reckless devotion, standing between danger and her children again and again.
Slowly, she understood:
he was not her enemy.
He was a man drowning in guilt, clawing his way back to honor.
Aldrick—the knight who had first delivered Edward—returned, wounded and hunted. He urged them to flee north before the valley fell. Rowan distrusted him, but Amalia chose to listen.
They crossed rivers, mountains, burned farmlands. Fought ambushes. Starved. Nearly froze. Nearly died.
Through it all—Rowan stayed.
Not merely as guardian of a prince,
but of a family he never expected to have.
