Chapter Three
Briar
The cabin smells like woodsmoke and a warmth I can’t name.
It hits me the moment he carries me over the threshold, and my body jerks in his arms before I can stop it.
Warmth has never meant safety. It meant fire stoked too high, water poured too hot, punishments meant to soften the spirit until it bent.
The man lowers me onto a blanket near the hearth. My palms slide across the woven fabric, too soft to make sense. I drag myself backward on instinct, spine hitting the corner wall before I realize I moved.
He doesn’t follow.
He crouches a short distance away, hands resting on his thighs so I can see every inch of them. No fists. No rope. No blade. Just stillness. But I feel him anyway—the space he takes up, the weight of him in the room.
Too quiet. Too unpredictable.
I pull my knees to my chest and curl into the smallest version of myself. My throat hums without permission, a high, thin sound that means danger to me and nothing to him.
He speaks low into some device, and it isn’t long until more footsteps approach.
My heart slams against my ribs, and I push myself deeper into the corner. A woman enters first, older, wrapped in layers that rustle. Her presence fills the room without touching me. Her eyes are steady but soft, the kind of soft that makes my chest ache in ways I didn’t prepare for.
She kneels slowly, not in front of me, but to the side—far enough that I can run if I choose. She doesn’t reach out. Doesn’t ask for my name. Doesn’t ask for anything.
She just says, “Child,” on a breath that’s more prayer than word.
The man moves then—but not toward me.
He stands, crosses to the small basin near the wall, and pours water into a tin cup. The sound is soft. Careful. Like he’s trying not to startle the air itself.
I watch the cup in his hand.
Water. Finally.
My throat tightens so hard it hurts.
He comes back slow, stopping well out of reach. He doesn’t offer it to my face, and doesn’t push it into my hands. Instead, he sets it on the floor between us close enough that I can take it.
“Whenever you want it,” he says quietly.
Another woman steps in behind the older one. Small. Eyes that hold the same shattered places I carry but glued together with something stronger than fear. She walks like she’s warning me she’s coming—boot scrape, heel drag, soft sigh. The opposite of the men who used to appear out of nowhere.
She kneels, too, her warmth brushing my skin. My chest tightens and pulls, like two broken pieces trying to remember how to find each other. It’s not fear, and that’s what makes it worse.
The older woman steps forward first. She touches her own chest. “Mama Rue.” Then she gestures gently to the beautiful dark-haired woman beside her. “Mercy.”
Her hand sweeps toward the man.
I grunt and hiss.
“And this one’s Rafe. He’s the fool who brings home strays without warning.”
Rafe’s nostrils flare, but his eyes stay on me. Like he’s afraid if he looks away, I’ll disappear.
The older woman speaks to him instead of me. “You found her out there?”
Rafe nods without taking his eyes off me. “Alone. Hurt. Running.”
Running. Always running.
The younger woman—Mercy—tilts her head, studying me with a quiet kind of understanding. Not pity, or judgement. A look that says she knows how it feels to be carried when you don’t trust the arms.
A small sound slips from me, rough and questioning. My body reacts before my mind does, fingers digging into the blanket.
Mercy whispers, “It’s alright. You don’t have to come closer.”
They’re speaking to me, but no one reaches. No one drags me upright. No one barks orders or punishes hesitation.
I don’t know what to do with that.
The older woman turns her gaze to me. “We help those the mountain delivers. It’s the code we live by.”
Delivered. Like I’m a message. A charge. A burden they accept.
I stare at her hands—they rest open on her knees, palms bare, showing me she has nothing to hide. Nothing to use. Nothing to take.
The room tilts. The heat of the fire creeps against my skin, unfamiliar and terrifying.
Rafe steps back, giving me space, and says quietly, “Only if you want help.”
Want.
Another thing I was never allowed to have.
I watch them all watching me, and for the first time since I escaped, the fear loosens by a thread. Only a thread. But it’s the first thing that hasn’t broken.
Mercy fills a basin with warm water, and the steam curls into the air in soft waves.
My body reacts before thought forms. I push myself tighter against the wall, nails scraping wood, throat working until a sharp sound escapes me.
Water meant punishment where I came from—too hot, too cold, used to shock, used to control.
Mercy pauses. She doesn’t move closer. “I’m just warming it,” she says softly, voice steady enough that my breath doesn’t splinter as hard as it could. “Nothing’s happening unless you say yes.”
Mama Rue settles onto a low stool, her knees cracking quietly. She watches me with an expression that feels too patient, too knowing. It twists something inside my chest, something that’s been clamped down so long it doesn’t know what to do with gentleness.
Mercy dips her fingers into the water and lifts them out slowly, letting droplets fall back into the basin. Each motion is careful, deliberate, spoken in silence so my body has time to understand her intention.
She narrates softly. “I’m wetting the cloth. I’m wringing it out. I’m moving toward you.”
My knees weaken with every word, but the clarity helps. Words that name actions. Actions that match words. Nothing hidden.
She holds the cloth out without touching me, giving me the choice to lean forward or pull back.
My hand trembles as I lift it halfway, then stop.
I can’t make myself cross the rest of the distance.
The memory of fingers gripping my jaw, forcing my face under water, slams into me so hard my vision fades around the edges.
A low hum breaks in my throat—warning, fear, plea. I don’t know which.
Mercy lowers the cloth. “Not your face first. Something easier.”
She reaches for my arm, stopping inches from my skin. Waiting. Her eyes meet mine, and the care in them reflects the places I try to hide. She’s lived inside fear, too. I see it. I feel it.
I let my arm fall toward her, though every instinct screams to pull it back. My fingertips brush her knuckles, and the shock of gentle contact burns through me.
She touches only my wrist. Barely. A whisper of warmth.
My stomach tightens, but I don’t flinch away.
Mercy lifts my arm with both hands, slow enough that I can pull back at any moment. I don’t. My muscles tremble with exhaustion, not resistance.
The warm cloth drags over my skin—soft, unhurried, nothing like what I braced for.
My body reacts before I understand it as heat spreads under my skin, sharp and confusing.
A shudder rolls through me, a ripple I can’t hide.
Not pain. Not fear. Something unfamiliar.
Something my body doesn’t know how to categorize.
Tears sting my eyes without permission.
Mama Rue speaks from her stool, voice low and steady. “You’re not meant to hurt anymore, child. Let the water ease what it can.”
When Mercy brushes a strand of hair off my shoulder to reach the nape of my neck, I jolt so hard the basin sloshes. She freezes instantly.
“Not touching your hair,” she says. “We’ll go slow. You tell me when.”
Mercy resumes washing my arms, my hands, the dirt embedded along each knuckle. She pauses every time I tense, waiting until the tremor leaves my muscles.
Little by little, my shoulders loosen. Not trust. Not yet. Just less fear than before.
Mama Rue steps closer, slow as dusk settling over a field. I don’t understand most things about her yet, but I understand her age, her certainty, her quiet. It presses against my skin in waves. When she reaches for my hair, my ribs snap tight.
She lifts a section gently, only to inspect it, but the moment her fingers touch the tangles, panic tears up my throat. The sound that comes out of me is sharp and broken—too loud, too raw. My body jerks backward so hard my spine hits the wall. I clutch my hair with both hands, curling over it.
Mama Rue stills. Her hands drop open at her sides.
“I won’t take it,” she says softly. “But it hurts you to leave it this way.”
Her voice is calm, but my body can’t hear calm. It hears only the memory tightening around my skull. Hands grabbing fistfuls, dragging me by the roots. Hair cut in anger. Hair cut as warning. Hair cut when they wanted me to know I didn’t own myself.
Inhales rip in and out, fast enough that my vision trembles. I can’t tell where I am for a second. Only hands. Only pain. Only before. Mercy sets the cloth aside and kneels in my line of sight.
“Hey,” she whispers, voice thin with understanding. “I’m not going to cut it. I swear. Let me fix it. Just fix it.”
I shake my head, clutching tighter. A sob claws deep in my chest, but only part of it reaches daylight—a helpless, wounded noise that slips from between my teeth.
Mercy inches forward on her knees, hands visible, palms up. “I know what that fear feels like. I know what it means to lose pieces of yourself you didn’t agree to give.”
Her eyes hold a quiet ache I recognize in my bones. She’s not guessing. She’s remembering.
Rafe takes a step, not toward me, but between me and Mama Rue’s scissors. The air shifts—him, moving—and my body notices before my eyes do.
His voice is low. “No cutting. Not unless she asks.”
Something eases inside me at that, a slackening of the vice around my lungs. A small, precious inch of space.
Mercy lifts one hand halfway, waits, then moves it a fraction closer until her fingers hover near my hair. “Let me untangle it. We’ll go slow. You pull away if it hurts.”
I loosen one fistful of hair. Barely. Fear vibrates through every muscle, but the way she looks at me—steady, patient—makes an old place inside me pause.
Mercy reaches out and touches a single strand. Light. Barely there. The gentleness stuns me more than any blow ever did.
She starts working at one knot with her fingertips. Quiet motions that ease one tiny piece at a time. When she meets resistance, she stops. Looks at me. Waits for the tremor in my shoulders to settle before continuing.
Time dissolves into the rhythm of her hands. The fear doesn’t vanish, but it stops clawing. The air grows easier to breathe.
Mama Rue hums a low blessing behind us. I don’t understand the words, but the cadence settles into my spine, smoothing the rough edges.
She settles onto the floor near me, her knees creaking. She doesn’t crowd my space. She doesn’t reach. She folds her hands in her lap, eyes soft but steady.
“Child.” Her voice is warm as coals banked for the night. “What do we call you?”
The hum inside me scrapes against bone. A name is dangerous. Names can be used to summon, to punish, to claim. Names were things taken from the girls who didn’t understand the rules fast enough.
I shake my head hard, chest tightening. I can’t speak it. I can’t trust sound. I can barely trust breath.
Rafe kneels a careful distance away, placing a scrap of paper and a pencil on the floor between us. He doesn’t push, just sets them where I can reach if I choose.
“You can write it,” he says. “Only if you want.”
Mama Rue watches me like she’s reading the places I hide instead of the expression on my face. “A name is a root. A place to grow from. But you decide if the soil is ready.”
Mercy nods once. “No rush. We’ll wait.”
The patience in the room feels heavier than fear. My fingers twitch at my sides. My eyes keep landing on the paper, then jumping away. I reach for the pencil before I can scare myself out of it.
My hand shakes so hard the tip scrapes against the paper. Mercy’s eyes widen, but she stays still, letting me fight my own war with the trembling. Sweat beads on my palms. The pencil rolls slightly between my fingers. I grip it tighter.
One letter. I press it onto the page. A crooked line, smudged at the edge.
B
My fingers tremble, but I keep going. I don’t look at their faces. I don’t want to know if they’re watching. I don’t want praise or pity. I want proof that I still exist.
I finish the last stroke.
B R I A R
My name. My truth. The only thing they never managed to take.
The letters shake, but they’re mine.
A sound rises in my throat—soft, shaky, unfamiliar. Mercy exhales as her eyes find mine.
Mama Rue repeats the name with reverence. “Briar. Strong enough to survive a storm. Sharp enough to keep yourself alive.”
A tear slips down my cheek before I can stop it.
Mercy reaches out, slow and open-palmed, and brushes one strand of my hair behind my ear. I lean into the touch—barely, instinctively—before I realize I’m doing it.
And for the first time in years, I don’t feel like a ghost.
I feel like Briar.