“No!” I shout, and Felix whips around at the sound of my voice, his eyes locking with mine. But I don’t care that he saw me. I’ve been hunted and chased the whole time I’ve been at this school and I’m done.

I jump down two branches and land in front of Felix.

He wipes blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and studies me smugly. “Well, you just saved me the trouble of dragging you from your room.”

His right shoulder twitches, but by the time he swings, I’m already blocking. He follows with a left hook to my face but I manage to dodge it, too.

“Let’s hope you’re better against me than your father was against my parents,” I say as I yank Ash’s dagger from my boot, slicing it diagonally toward him as I stand.

He jumps out of the way, cursing. “And let’s hope you’re better than your dead mother,” he says, and swings at me again. I deflect with my left and slash him across his shoulder with the knife.

But he doesn’t look angry or in pain. In fact, he grins at me. For a split second he goes blurry. What the hell? He’s staring at my leg and I follow his eyes only to discover a needle sticking out of my thigh. Oh, shit.

The branches dance in front of my eyes and I drop the knife just as he sends a hard kick to my stomach. But instead of trying to move out of the way, I take the impact with a grunt and manage to wrap my arms around his leg and hold on. Only, my coordination is failing me and I stumble, knocking him off balance and both of us off the branch.

“I’m taking you with me,” I mumble incoherently as I cling to his leg.

He grabs on to a vine to slow us, but we’re falling fast, hitting branches on the way down. I try desperately to keep my eyes open, to maintain a hold on his leg, but my eyelids are impossibly heavy. They flutter one last time and the world goes dark.

WHEN I COME to, colors swim in front of my eyes and pain radiates from my shoulder, ribs, and head. Noise fades in and out. I crack my eyelids open a little farther and can just make out a patch of maroon fabric…a couch maybe?

I try to sit up, but I’m already sitting. I force myself to blink, and it takes me a moment to make sense of the shapes in my vision. I catch sight of my arms, which are bruised and cut up. My wrists are zip-tied to the arms of a wooden chair, and since I can’t move my feet, I assume my ankles are tied to the chair legs as well. If I struggle or move around, the ties slice into my skin.

Suddenly I’m inhaling something awful that’s reminiscent of ammonia, and the fog in my brain starts to clear. A man stands in front of me, waving a small glass vial under my nose. My chair is against a wall, and now I can make out a heavy desk to my right and a fireplace to my left.