I didn't bother waiting to see if they'd followed because in all reality it wouldn't matter if I looked back or not. I'd done enough damage dragging my drama to the Forest's shores, I didn't need to add more fuel to the fires of retribution that would surely be stoked if the young matriarch sassed at the Lagoon men. It was bad enough I'd dragged not one but three Lagoon men out, including the good-for-nothing Boss.

Why they thought I was more worthy of recapture than Tyr made absolutely zero sense to me, but it didn't really matter. What was done was done and the manacles that had long ago begun to chafe at my fetlocks had only grown more restrictive. I could feel the weight of them with each reluctant step I forced myself to take back into this tepid prison, my fluted ears pinned so tightly against my neck that they might as well not have existed at all.

Sea water sluiced from my tired limbs and it was all I could do to drag myself ashore again, not bothering to look behind me to see who had pursued me from the shores nor if they were still tailing me. If past experience held true, the moment I was once again "safely" locked up, I would resume being invisible in their eyes and for once the prospect was almost kind of enticing. But for all my pride, I was still exhausted from my travel. Exercise wasn't exactly easy here in the swamp, and I had never possessed a desire to spar with the likes of these men, which meant that it had taken every spare scrap of energy I possessed to make it to the Forest and back.

I hadn't even had the dignity to drown on the way here like I'd wanted.

I leaned beneath the low limbs of an old, crooked-limbed tree to catch my breath, trying to ignore the way my knees felt weak and wobbly. Sleeping this close to the ocean was a bad idea in the spring, as I'd learned last year when a surprise high tide, brought in by a storm, had nearly dragged me out to sea. But a moment's rest wouldn't hurt... probably. With a last sour look around me, my eyes closed and I leaned my full weight against the gnarly trunk.