He reached for her, hands rough, gripping her arms. She twisted, fighting, her nails raking his flesh. He snarled, shoving her back onto the bed. The mattress sagged, the rope frame creaked. His weight bore down, crushing, his breath sour with whiskey.
She kicked, clawed, her cry tearing the silence. “No!”
His hand struck her cheek, the crack echoing off the walls. Stars burst behind her eyes. His other hand fumbled at her dress, tugging fabric, buttons straining.
Panic surged. She thought of Grey Horse’s voice promisingsafe. She would not let Thomas break her. She would not.
With a desperate surge, she drove her knee upward. He screamed in pain, staggering, clutching himself.
She scrambled free, skirts tangling, bare feet slapping the floor. Her hand seized the latch, wrenched the door wide.
Cold night air rushed in.
She ran.
?
The yard blurred around her, the barn a hulking shadow, the ground rough beneath her feet. Behind, Thomas bellowed her name, his curses splitting the dark.
She fled toward the trees, heart wild, lungs burning. Branches tore at her dress, roots caught her toes, but she did not stop. She plunged deeper, the night swallowing her, the ranch vanishing behind.
Tears streamed down her face, streaking dirt and blood. Fear drove her, but so did something stronger: the desperate, unbroken will to live free.
Grey Horse…Her mind cried his name, though her lips made no sound.
The darkness closed around her, vast and unknown. But she was out. She was running.
And she would not stop.
Chapter Twenty-Two: Night Run
The night swallowed her.
Grass whipped her calves and thorns clawed at her skirts as she ran, lungs burning, heart hammering loud enough to drown the world. Behind her, the house was a square of darker dark and the barn a hulking shadow; beyond those, Thomas’s shouts ripped the air. She didn’t look back. Looking back would slow the legs that must keep moving.
The ground pitched and rolled beneath her bare feet. Stones bit. Something sharp opened the skin near her heel and hot wetness followed a sting that flared, dimmed, and flared again with each step. She tasted copper in her mouth and wasn’t sure if it was blood or fear.
She plunged into the cottonwoods where the creek ran, the smell of damp leaf-mold rising sweet and rank. Branches slapped her face. Spider silk strung between trees grasped her cheeks like cold fingers. She stumbled, caught herself on a trunk slick with moss, gulped air, and listened.
The night breathed.
Crickets rasped and a small thing scurried under brush. Farther off, a coyote yipped and was answered. Above, the leaves whispered. Then, faint and hateful, the sound she dreaded: Thomas, crashing clumsily through the undergrowth, cursingwith each step, the weight of his fury breaking twigs and trampling ferns. “Violet! Get back here! You hear me?”
She pressed herself against the cottonwood, palms flat to the bark, and held her breath until her ribs hurt. Her pulse threw itself against her throat.
He thrashed ahead, lantern swinging, smoke-smell and sour whiskey breath drifting through the trees like a bad dream. The lantern’s glow smeared gold across trunks and vanished, then returned, then slid away again as he moved back and forth without patience or sense.
“Useless… ungrateful…” His voice dropped to a mutter of ugly words that stung even from a distance. The light dwindled. He wove off toward the field, bellowing once more into the dark.
Violet exhaled all at once, the release making her knees shake.
Move.
She slipped down the creek bank and stepped into the water. The cold seized her ankles to the bone. She bit her lip hard to keep from gasping. The current tugged, insistent, like a hand tugging at her hem as if to saycome this way, come this way. She walked sideways, calves slicing the water, feeling for stones with her toes, letting the creek carry her a few yards before she climbed out on the far side where the bank was low and muddy.
Water ran off her skirt and pattered into the leaves. She crouched and smeared mud across her feet and shins without thinking, the way she had seen boys do in play. The mud was a kindness and a disguise both. She tore a strip from her petticoat—clumsy with shaking hands—and cinched it around the bleeding heel. The fabric was already stained from other days, other deeds. Tonight it became a bandage.
Think.Grey Horse’s voice in memory was quiet but firm.Listen to the land.Ezra’s, too, a whisper:Road’s fork.
