Images of them at my bedside swirl through my mind, getting tangled up somewhere in the brutal nightmares that seem to possess my body and mind. Screams pierce the silence, and I tremble so violently, I wonder if I’m actually dying. When they try to comfort me, it only makes it worse.

“What can we do?” I hear Judge’s voice. And then someone else. The doctor, I think.

“Time.” His words fade away, morphing into something else.

Hellhounds are chasing me through the dark forest, nipping at my heels. My screams seem to echo all around me, the sound reverberating through my chest and down into the ground, only to rumble beneath my feet. I dare a glance over my shoulder, gasping for breath, only to realize they aren’t hounds at all. They are beasts with men’s faces. All the men who have ever hurt me.

Lorenzo De La Rosa, my father. Santiago. Theron. And of course, Judge.

I try to fight them off. I try to keep them at bay with a large stick, but just like all the other times, I am no match. One by one, they pounce on me and tear at my flesh, eating me alive until there’s nothing left but my frail, beating heart.

“Vivid dreams,” a voice murmurs around me. “Side effect.”

I strain to hear the rest, but suddenly, I’m pulled back into my father’s office as if through a vortex. Back to a time when I decided it would be a good idea to show him I had a backbone. He seems larger than life in his deathly form. Looming over the desk as he leans forward, his face half eviscerated from the explosion, exposing his skull. When his arms move, he hovers closer to the ceiling, and black smoke curls around the room, suffocating the air.

Foolish little girl. His words reverberate through me, chilling me to the bone. And then, just as before, he’s dragging me to the chapel to mete out my punishment all over again.

The marble is so cold against my cheek when he tosses me down. I cry because it has to be real. But it’s the sound of him pulling his belt free that truly douses me in terror.

The leather slices into my skin, and I jolt, only to be slammed back down by his boot. And then he repeats it. Over and over. The violence has no end, and my tears won’t save me, even when my limbs start to fall apart, tearing at the seams.

“Please,” I beg.

“Bad girls go to hell!” he roars as the floor opens up to a fiery pit, and I’m falling, falling down to the depths of the inferno to burn for all of eternity.

“Mercedes, please.” Gentle fingers touch my face, and my eyelashes flutter, pulling me back from the clutches of my mind. “Wake up.”