Chapter 2 #2
I snuff the tiny flare of warmth in my palm, even though the cold bites immediately. I’m already breathing hard. Moving will make noise. Noise will attract attention. Is it better to remain still or run?
A twig snaps somewhere to my left, sharp as a nail being driven into wood. One that could only be made by something heavy.
They are so close, I can’t make a sound.
A second snap answers, farther back. Then a third, to my right, like they’re tight around my little patch of safety.
My gaze flicks to the crude doorway and the two boards I can push aside if I must.
My hands drift to my throat, not because I want to touch the scar, but because my body remembers teeth there. Fingers there. Breath hot and cruel against my skin while I fought and fought and still lost.
Gregory is dead, but the things he trained didn't die as neatly as their leader.
A muffled sound curls through the trees: a signal.
My magic flares in response, a hot spike behind my ribs, the way a cornered creature raises its hackles.
I suppress it immediately because magic is a beacon. Magic is blood in the water as hungry sharks circle. Magic is why they found me at eighteen and why they never stopped searching.
I shift my weight carefully, soundlessly, easing away from the oak.
My feet find the familiar pattern of packed dirt I’ve trodden down over weeks.
I know every dip, root, and stone here. I slide one hand beneath the straw pallet and wrap my fingers around the only weapon I’ve managed to keep: an old hunting knife, the handle cracked, the blade stained from rabbit blood.
It won’t save me from a pack, but it makes me less helpless.
I listen harder, letting the forest’s sounds sort themselves into meaning, but beneath it is the pattern of steps that don’t belong. They’re too heavy to be an animal.
My stomach rolls. I swallow hard, tasting bile.
Move.
The word is a command I give myself, and I push the boards aside and slip out into the night.
Mist curls around my calves as I sprint barefoot toward the denser part of the forest, where brambles and low branches make travel difficult. I learned early that difficult terrain is a friend; predators prefer open ground.
A shape moves between two trunks ahead, too quick to catch clearly, but its presence is like a ripple of menace in the air. Another shifts behind me, forcing me forward. They’re corralling me away from my shack.
My lungs tighten, panic trying to claw its way up my throat, but I shove it away. Fear makes me sloppy, and I don’t have the luxury of making even the smallest mistake.
I move faster.
Branches rake at my arms. Thorns bite into my skin. A soft laugh drifts through the mist.
My blood runs cold.
They’re close enough to mock me.
Their corrupted essence brushes my senses again like grease smeared over fingertips. It makes my stomach twist, and my magic writhe as if it wants to lurch free.
Wolf, it screams. And bear.
The monsters run, but they’re not alone.
They’ve brought others.
The forest blurs around me, as my hair, unbound and wild, catches on branches, yanking my scalp hard enough to water my eyes.
Footsteps thunder behind me. They’re done circling and pretending to be quiet.
I push harder, ignoring burning lungs and legs that shake with exhaustion. The frigid air slices into my chest as I face the fact that my body is too thin, tired, and hungry for this.
But I have outrun them before.
I can do it again.
Another laugh rings out, closer now, low and satisfied.
“Run, little witch!” a rough voice calls. He laughs, his excitement bubbling like a hot spring. Bruno.
A second voice answers from somewhere to my left. “She does make it fun, doesn’t she?” Anatol calls. “The chase sharpens the appetite.” His tone is smooth and cultured, which almost makes it worse.
My vision tunnels as I risk a backward look. There are too many.
In panic, my magic surges, bright and hot, and I nearly let it light me like a flare in the dark. Fear holds it back.
I’m so tired of fear. Tired of running. Tired of shrinking. Tired of letting monsters decide what I am. My feet skid on frost-slick leaves as I stop short behind a thick cluster of brambles. For one heartbeat, I stand there, trembling, the knife useless in my hand and breath steaming in the air.
And I make a choice I have never made before.
I stop suppressing my magic and let it rise, but a massive weight slams into my back.
The world explodes sideways. Air leaves my lungs in a brutal rush as I hit the forest floor. Mud fills my mouth. My cheek grinds against the chilled earth as a heavy body pins me down.
Bear.
Bruno’s breath is hot and rank at my ear as he shifts partially, enough to gain hands while keeping the bulk of his strength. His forearm presses across my shoulders, grinding me into the dirt.
“Got you,” he rumbles. “Told you she’d tire.”
My wrists are yanked behind my back. I thrash, kicking, clawing, but another body lands at my side.
Anatol.
He crouches gracefully, still mostly human, pale hair falling into sharp blue eyes that gleam with cruel satisfaction.
“You always were better at running than fighting,” he murmurs. “I suppose it should make me mad, but in truth, it makes the capture taste sweeter.”
His fingers slide into my hair and yank my head back. Panic detonates inside me.
The position. The weight. The forest floor. My trapped arms.
My body remembers.
Gregory’s breath. Bruno’s bulk. Anatol’s laughter. The sound of tearing fabric. Fingers bruising. The way I left my body to survive what it couldn’t bear.
My vision fractures.
No no no—
Anatol’s nose drags slowly up the column of my throat, inhaling deeply. His tongue flicks against my skin, deliberate and degrading.
“Still tastes like magic,” he whispers against my pulse. “You’ve been hiding it from us.”
My stomach heaves.
I buck violently, but Bruno tightens his grip, laughing low in his chest.
“Easy,” he says. “All the magic in your fingertips is going to be so much fun to control.”
Anatol laughs. “We’re going to enjoy this. There’s no rush now. No audience. Just us to finish what Gregory started.”
The edges of my consciousness begin to splinter. The trees blur. My limbs feel distant and disconnected.
This is how it happens.
This is how I disappear.
Fear squeezes tighter and tighter until there is no room left for breath.
And then, beneath the terror, beneath the memory, beneath the old, practiced dissociation, heat surges through me.
My magic.
It isn’t afraid. It’s furious. It surges up my spine like wildfire, slamming into the cage of my ribs.
My eyes snap open fully.
“GET,” I rasp, my voice shaking but rising, “OFF. ME.”
Anatol smiles.
Bruno laughs.
Their goons snort and cackle. They think I’m begging.
I close my eyes for one half-second, but this time it’s to focus.
Another laugh rings out, closer now, relishing the taste of my fear in the air.
Fuck these assholes.
My magic floods my limbs like fire and fills my throat. It streams through my palms, my chest, my skin until my ragged hollow shell is bright and alive. For months, since the first moment it bubbled inside me, I’ve treated my power like a dangerous animal that I needed to cage and starve.
But what is the use of power if it can’t be wielded to save me?
Tonight, I will unleash it and make it my weapon. I don’t have a choice.
I throw my hand outward, flinging my power into the world like a curse.
The pulse erupts from me with violence.
The forest shudders as it echoes outward in an arc, like a scream sent into the heart of the world.
For a moment, there is silence. Then Bruno is flung from my back with a shocked gasp, and Anatol’s big wolf body cracks against a tree.
Then the forest answers with a power so majestic, I can do nothing but gape.
The ground beneath me groans and rumbles like an awakening giant stirring in its sleep, and then the world lurches.
I'm propelled forward faster than I can run.
My feet barely touch the ground as the trees smear into streaks of brown and green.
My hair whips behind me as I gasp, reaching out instinctively, but there’s nothing to hold on to.
The magic sweeps me through brambles that separate like Broadway curtains, over roots that flatten beneath my passage.
Ahead, the forest breaks.
Unfamiliar rock rises into the night sky. A cave mouth yawns open where there was nothing before; a wound in the earth rimmed with frost.
It shouldn’t be there, but I don’t have time to question it.
The force hurls me toward it, and I stumble inside, the air instantly colder and older, smelling of damp rock and something faintly metallic. My magic sputters like a candle in the wind.
My legs give out.
I hit the stone floor hard, pain blooming in my hip, my shoulder, and my cheek. The knife skitters away into darkness. My hands scrabble uselessly against the ground, searching for it.
The world tilts as the last of my power drains out of me like water from cupped hands.
I'm so tired of living in fear and of being alone.
My eyelids flutter as the cave ceiling swims above me, dark and endless. Somewhere outside, distant shapes shout, confused by the sudden vanishing of their prey.
But I can’t move. I have no strength left to fight.
I can only surrender to the silence and exhaustion.
When darkness narrows my vision, I don’t know if it’s sleep or death that claims me.