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Dedication

To my parents who have never stopped believing in me

Some of the thematic material in Within These Wicked Walls discusses death, body horror, and physical and emotional abuse from a parental figure. For a more detailed description of sensitive content please visit www.laurenblackwood.com.

CHAPTER 1

Sweltering heat hit me like the sudden leap of a bonfire when I traded the protection of the mule-drawn cart’s tarp for burning sand. I clutched my satchel, squinting against the dying sun. Heat waves created illusions of life out on the sand. Sometimes they came as ripples on a pool of water. Others, a snake looking to escape under a rock. Or an Afar caravan carting slabs of salt cut from the desert’s floor to be sold in the market.

They were all just the desert’s cruel trick. There was nothing out here. Nothing but me, the merchant I’d caught a ride with in town, and that towering mass of structured stone in the distance that was to be my new home.

My frizzy curls stuck to my temples and the back of my neck as I fished a sweaty bill from my pocket, but the merchant held up his hand against it like I was offering him a spider. “No charge.”

“To show my appreciation,” I insisted.

I should’ve just kept my mouth shut. The cart had been a godsend after six others had vehemently refused. A simple sheet of wood raised between two sturdy wheels on the back end and a sweating mule hitched to the front. Plenty of room for me to curl up and rest, even if I had to share the space with the merchant and his clay pots of spices. And it had a tarp to lie under for shade. A tarp. Even so, it was my last bit of money, at least until this new job paid. Besides, if I was going to pay him, the least he could do was drop me closer to the door.

But, God bless him, the merchant insisted more frantically, his raised hand turning into an aggressive shooing motion. “God have mercy on your soul,” he said, and smacked the mule into a sudden run, kicking sand into the air as the cart circled back the way we came to take the long way through the desert.

The cloud of dust left behind stuck to every sweaty inch of me. I licked the salt from my lips and crunched on it.