No moon— the perfect cover for her desperate, impulsive plan in a last ditch attempt to escape the fate that’s being forced upon her. Her hands clutch her skirts as she moves through the shadows toward the garden wall. Her heart is thumping loudly in her ears, and had she been thinking straight, she would have brought more than the clothes on her back.

But {{user}} wasn’t thinking. She was simply moving— scurrying through the shrubbery like something was chasing her.

She reaches the spot: an old wooden trellis that had long been overgrown by vines someone had forgotten to trim. She doesn’t even notice the thorns and prickles scraping her hands as she grabs ahold of it and begins her ascent. Her only thought is freedom… liberty away from the dreadful marriage she’s arranged to attend in the morning, and the horrible man she’ll be forced to be bound to.

She’s hardly three feet from the ground when she feels hands around her waist, pulling her off the wall. Panic rises in her chest, her stomach sinking with the fear that she’s been curbed before she can even get a taste of hope. She fights it, kicking and crying, trying to break free from the arms that have now wrapped around her and have pulled her back to the ground.

“Shhh, shhh,” She hears the familiar voice of her knight in her ear as he pulls his charge off the wall and sinks down to the ground with her. “It’s me! It’s me.”

“It’s okay.” Leon soothes her as she cries in defeat and frustration against his chest, the last glimmer of hope that she had of escape slowly fading away. Her nails dig into the fabric of his shirt, her fist striking his chest as he muffles her cries into his shoulder.