But never this, never one of us.
This wasn't a normal ritual. Not the big, carefully staged masses with masks and incense and prepared speeches. Those have rules and predictable patterns.
This one was different.
And then someone said my name and I knew I had to flee.
My stomach twists at the memory, bile rising in my throat. I swallow it down and keep running.
I don't know where I'm going. Don't know if there's anywhere safe. I'm in Germany, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but this robe and the dirt under my feet and the scar on my arm that burns every time I think about going back.
This was supposed to be an offering after the success of the hunt. That’s what we were told. A thanks to the Morrígan for favoring us in our objective.
That being the man we came here to kill, Darragh Killaney. Head of the Killaney family and everything we were told was evil.
I knew things in the Order were changing.
I’d been worried for months. Ever since we stepped up the attacks on the Killaneys, something in the air shifted. The rituals got darker. The offerings, bolder. It wasn’t enough to threaten anymore. She wanted spectacle and blood, they told us.
I should have refused when Cormac told me to pack. Should have fought harder. Should have done something other than nod and obey like I always do.
But I was scared.
I still am.
My foot catches on something, a root, a rock, I don't know, and I go down hard. Pain shoots through my knee and I bite down on my lip to keep from crying out. Blood runs down my leg and I press my hand against the cut, gasping.
The chanting is quieter now. Farther away, but that doesn't mean they've stopped looking.
I push myself up, legs trembling, and keep moving.
As I run, I try to bury the most intrusive thought I have, that I don’t expect to live through this.
There is no world where I get on a plane, fly back to the U.S., and slide quietly into some normal life. The Order has eyeseverywhere. Shadowharbor has hands everywhere. I’m marked and owned, but I have to try.
My legs stumble as the slope turns steeper. For a terrifying second I slide, leaves and soil rushing under my feet, then I slam shoulder first into a trunk and cling to it, breath ragged.
Think.
Running blindly only gets me so far.
They’ll have people on the roads. They always do. Shadowharbor guards in plain clothes, watching for strays, ensuring no one wanders too close to the wrong forest at the wrong time.
But if I stay in the woods, I freeze or they track me. Dogs. Drones. Men with guns and torches and tranquilizers and the authority to call my death obedience.
The trees thin out ahead and I can see the faint outline of a road cutting through the darkness. My heart fills with a stupid desperate hope and I go. I run faster, branches whipping against my face, my arms, until I break through the tree line.
The road is narrow, barely wide enough for two cars, and it stretches out in both directions like a promise I'm not sure I can trust.
But it's something.
It's more than the woods.
I crouch low, trying to catch my breath. My hands won't stop shaking and my teeth are chattering so hard I can barely think straight.
I need to get to the U.S., but I have no money, no passport, and frankly, no plan.
The only thing I know as I press my hand against the scar on my forearm, the one they gave me when I was fifteen, the one that marks me as theirs, is that I will not die for their god. If the Morrígan wants blood, she can take Cormac’s.
