A Dark and Wild Wood

Prologue

I must warn you first: This tale is not a romance.

I wish it were so. I could paint myself in your mind as Persephone, pacing the dark underlord’s fine halls with my crimson-stained teeth and a longing I could not place—for him or for the earth above?

For I had tasted the fruit of the underworld and been ushered into his sanctum.

We would have shared in his power, Death and I. I had often dreamed it this way.

But I am no Persephone. And I’m certainly no saint. I am a witch, a sinner, a whore. Unlike Persephone I do not have a statue or a place beside a god forever. I did many other wild and wondrous things in my lifetime, and it all began with one story: I died.

No, my dear, be warned, if you are looking for a romance or a moral, this is not the tale for you. For this tale is a horror.