Raucous laughter came from behind me, and deep inside, I knew it was only a matter of time before they caught up to me and finished the job. This wasn’t mercy, letting me run, this was releasing a hare for the hunt. Despite the pain where he kicked me and the other blows I received, despite the blood dribbling from my lips from some internal wound, I raced through the forest like an injured doe trying to escape her hunters. I’d never thought about how the animal must’ve felt when I hunted it down and killed it, and the irony of the situation tasted bitter on my tongue.

My chest tightened as I panted in deep gasps of air, but nothing worked to quench the fire in my throat. Pushing on, I jumped over a pile of dead wood and rotting plants and landed with a cry as my ankle gave out.

Stumbling through the underbrush, I finally crashed and fell down a ravine. My leg hit hard stone, and I nearly shrieked as blinding pain filled my vision. When I tried to move the leg, the blinding pain came again, white and hot. One leg most likely broken; one ankle at least sprained. There was nothing I could do anymore.

My vision fuzzy, I waited until they caught up to me. They would torture me, assault me, then if they were feeling merciful, they would kill me fast. But more likely than not, they would play with me like a cat did with its prey.

Something slithered beside me, the cold, clammy scales making me freeze up as a little albino snake in the dirt slithered past me. It had puncture marks on its tail from another snake, most likely, unless it had bitten its own tail. Even with its muted coloring, my father’s lessons came back to me—it was most certainly venomous.

There was crashing in the trees up above me, and a voice whispering in my head by fang, by fang, by fang. Whatever they had in store for me, whatever they could do, it would be much worse than what I could do for myself now, in this moment.

And so I grabbed the snake, enraging it, until it bit into the soft flesh of my arm and the world turned black.

14

WHAT IS AND WHAT NEVER WILL BE

I BOLTED UPRIGHT in my bed, my breath heaving in my chest. It was so real … so, so real. His voice, his touch, his men. I took a few deep breaths before I realized that I wasn’t where I thought I should be. Not on the muddy banks of Hel but in a house—more specifically, the wooden house I grew up in. The loft with the low ceiling. It’d always been a little cramped in here with six other sisters, but I couldn’t tell where anyone was.