He waited. 

She stared.

He watched.

She went to the tree.

Behind her, as her clumsy-numbed fingers worked at the chain, he paced. It likely did not ease her attempts, having the chain pulled back and forth, back and forth. She was not letting him go. A singsong croon worked its way up from his throat, rising and falling impatiently, rolling across the ground in a reverberating rumble that gave vent to his displeasure. 

But there was no time now, to force his desire on her. He didn’t know how to remove the shackles. He didn’t know how to show her any other way that this was all he wanted. It was not, just then, the only thing he wanted. So, when the links slackened and she turned to him, chain once again curled about her arms, he looked at her for a second longer, eyes heavy lidded, sharply focused, breathing fast, muscles bunched. Chained was not what he wanted. But leaving… Leaving was. 

He needed no second urging, but rushed forward, stumbling as the shackles hobbled him, thrashing into a roll. He tried again to run. Eager to place whatever distance he could between the dead thing and its hunger. But when he tripped again not long after, he wailed, sounding very like the young boy he appeared to be, picked himself up and ran on his two feet. There was a stilted, jilting method to his running, as though he did not know how to push himself forward when he was standing even a little upright. Headlong flight, however, did not require grace. He did not care to keep his dignity. 

So, ignoring every pain still biting into him, he tucked his wrists in close, leaned forward and went. Overtaking Samaire in a few moments.

He ran until his lungs were fire. Until his feet were stumbling stone. Until his breath wheezed. Nothing could have stopped him but catching that chain around a tree. He ran until water rushed about his knees in a heady momentum that left him dizzy when he finally stopped, swaying, confused, lost. A river. A wide river, movement, motion, magic at the edges. 

Chest heaving, he lifted his nose to the wind and snuffed desperately at the air, panting, until he found that gentle promise of life and living. It was there. The dead thing did not reach here. Safe. He collapsed, snorting as water splashed up his nose. His throat hurt. His feet hurt. His chest hurt. Everything hurt. But the river’s banks were clean, soft mud, and he let himself sink into it, the water easing his aches, though it promised to add to them if he stayed in it too long. He didn’t want to move. He wasn’t sure he could, now he’d stopped.