Daria's POV

 

The journey back felt like it flew by, as if fear had a way of squishing time until all I could remember was the pain of one moment and the dread of the next. Lucius didn’t ease up on the horse for anything, not the fences, not the low-hanging branches that whipped past my faceand I didn’t say a word. I clung to his shoulder with one hand and my ring with the other, as if pressing the stone against my palm could somehow keep whatever was trapped inside it from reaching my daughter before I did.

 

We burst through the gate at a gallop, and I was...