"A Surprise" Revision -- Partial

The sound of hooves pounding after her echoes off of the ancient brick arches and hits the girl in the face. For a moment she stumbles, regains her footing, locks her eyes on the warm yet isolating darkness ahead. Now, this wasn't kind of night that wraps you up and guards you in its concealment, making you feel invincible. No; this was the kind that creates a bubble of goosebumps and emptiness around you, a space that echoes your every movement as if to proclaim your location to all the monsters of the night. But the sections of yellow light shining into the archway from streetlamps below and around are even less comfort to our runaway monarch.

Her feet hit the bricks with increasing deviation from any sort of straight path, though the burning in her thighs is of no bother and her breathing is (with effort) still under control. The Royal Cross Country champion has never run so hard, let alone with fear in her heart. If she could stop and be safe from the Hunters, a danger the unwillingly ignorant princess did not foresee at the start of this journey, she would hear the flicker and sizzle of gas lamps, the splash of the water below, and maybe even the laughter of her subjects in the crumbling apartments that surround her. But she cannot stop to enjoy these things: the small things of the outside world she left the castle specifically to enjoy.

A dark figure presiding in the shadows at the end of the bridge she is about to turn a corner onto knows these things very well. The silhouette knows many things that even the king does not and has passed through more trials than anyone can count. This shadow of a man takes a hesitant step forward as the princess comes flying around the corner, and into a shaft of light. She doesn't see him at first, he is so camouflaged, but catches sight of him before completing three strides. She stops from the feet up, similar to a cartoon character slapping up against an invisible wall.

The girl's heart sinks heavy down into her stomach. Her throat catches and her mouth dries up. Every inch of her skin turns hot from the underneath out. Her vision blurs and flickers like an old movie. She begins to notice the compression in her chest, like it was being been pounded on by a prizefighter, or sat on by an elephant. She can't breathe. The Hunters have her surrounded. She's caught. She's already dead.

The stranger reaches out his hand, his face confused, like he's just found out someone he thought was dead isn't after all. "Rose?"