Nora had spent her whole life wanting out, and now she was chained inside a cage. She was a faerie with monarch wings, a princess of the feywild who hated the crown. She had run from silk sheets and bowing servants toward something real. Faerie traffickers had answered that wish. They dragged her out of the feywild and locked her in a wagon cage, and adventure now smelled like rotting straw and iron. Her wings were pinned. A rope wound tight across the base of both, so she could not lift them, could not cut a single strand. Two traffickers dozed by a low fire. Their wagon sat under a huge dark tree, its heavy trunk swallowing the firelight, its shadowed branches hanging like a lid over the whole camp. Nora tested the rope again. It held. She stopped fighting the knot and studied it instead. One loop crossed over the cage bar, not her body. If she could saw that loop against the bar's rough edge, the whole rope would loosen. She pressed the rope to the metal and pulled. Slow. Quiet. A trafficker stirred. She froze, heart slamming, until he settled. Then she pulled again. The rope frayed. Fiber by fiber, it thinned. The loop snapped. Her wings sprang free and knocked the cage door. The sound cracked through the camp. Both traffickers jolted awake and lunged for her. Nora did not wait. Her wing swept down on the closest man, hard as a blade, and threw him into the fire pit. He screamed and rolled. The second grabbed the cage bars and shoved his hand inside. She snapped the door open into his face. He stumbled back, clutching his nose. She burst out and shot upward. Her wings caught air for the first time in days. She climbed toward the dark tree, aiming for the gaps in its twisted branches. A net whistled past her leg. She dodged, banked hard around the ancient trunk, and broke above the canopy. Below, the traffickers shouted and pointed. One raised a crossbow. A bolt tore through her left wing. Pain flared white. She spun, dropped, then forced the torn wing to beat. It worked, barely. She flew on, ragged and lopsided, over the treetops and into the open sky. When the camp vanished behind her, she landed in a second grove and pressed her back to a thick, twisting trunk. Her wing bled. Her hands shook. But no one had caught her. Nora looked at the dark forest stretching in every direction. She had no map, no coin, no idea which way led anywhere safe. She was free, hurt, and completely alone in a world she had begged to enter. She wiped her eyes and stood. This was the adventure she wanted. Now she had to survive it.

Nora heard them before she saw them. Two voices, low and angry, crashing through the brush behind the grove. The traffickers had found her trail. Her left wing still bled from the crossbow bolt, and blood left a bright path across the ferns. She could not fly straight. If they caught her, the cage waited again. She pushed off the twisting trunk and stumbled into the trees. Her hurt wing dragged. Branches clawed her arms. Behind her, one man laughed. The other shouted her name like he already owned it. Nora ran toward light. Beyond the last dark trees she saw rooftops, red and blue, crooked chimneys, a stone gate. A town. People. She fixed her eyes on it and forced her legs faster. The tree line was close. Ten steps. Five. She broke through the brush and fell onto a cobbled street. Market stalls, startled faces, the smell of bread. She scrambled up. Behind her the two traffickers burst out of the trees, one with a burned arm, the other with a swollen, ruined nose. The nose one drew a knife. "Come here, little bird," he said. A huge shape stepped between them and Nora. He was a half-orc, taller than the stalls, grey-green skin, tusks, long black hair. His fists were the size of stones. The townsfolk near him shrank back on instinct. He did not look at them. He looked at the knife. "Leave her alone," the half-orc said. Just that. Plain and flat. A second man slid up beside him, younger, brown hair, red horns, a red tail, a grin already on his face. He glanced at Nora's torn wing and the blood, then at the two men. "Two on one wounded girl," the horned one said. "Real brave. You boys want to explain that to the whole market, or you want to run?" The burned trafficker lunged for Nora. The half-orc moved first. He caught the man by the collar and threw him into a stall. Wood cracked. The knife-man swung at the half-orc's side. The horned boy flicked a small vial from his jacket and smashed it at the man's feet. Grey smoke boiled up. The trafficker choked, blind, swinging at air. Nora did not waste it. She dropped low, swept her good wing sideways, and struck the knife-man's legs out from under him. He hit the cobbles hard. The half-orc pinned the burned one flat. Townsfolk closed in now, shouting, brave in a crowd. The two traffickers saw the odds turn. They wrenched free, scrambled up, and fled back into the dark trees empty-handed. Nora stood in the market, shaking, alive, not caged. The horned boy offered his hand. "Beau," he said. "That's Garrett. You're bleeding pretty bad. Lucky for you, patching people up is kind of my thing." Garrett nodded, careful, like he feared his own size. "You're safe now," he said. Nora took the hand. For the first time since the cage, she was not alone.