She staggered forward. Her dress was hanging off her shoulder, the heavy beaded fabric dragging through the dirt. She gathered the mud-stained material and hobbled on, limping over the bridge as she investigated further.
The hem at her back had torn when Hadrian grabbed her. The strap now sagged and?—
“Oh, my God.” Daisy stopped, her heart dropping. “My locket.” Her neck was bare.
She looked back at the winding path and gardens, realizing the exact moment it must have snapped.
“No.” Tears welled in her eyes. She couldn’t lose her locket. She needed to go back.
She looked longingly at the tall yurt in the distance, aglow in veridian, beckoning to her like the long-lost Emerald City of Oz lured Dorothy.
A tear tripped past her lashes. Going back would end her.
She couldn’t. She was finally close to safety.
Walk away.
Turn around and put one foot in front of another.
She forced herself to take a step in the direction of the safe zone, then another until she was halfway over the footbridge. But she couldn’t go any further. Every step tore at her heart as if she were abandoning her mother, losing her all over again.
He was going to hurt her if he caught her again. Not only that, he’d want to punish her now.
She could safe word. She could find the locket and say the magic words, and this nightmare would end. So what if she lost the money? She’d already lost pieces of herself she’d never get back.
Daisy staggered forward, letting gravity edge her along. She wobbled from one side of the path to the other in a serpentine pattern drawn of weariness more than any sort of strategy. Her brain hurt from thinking.
Rubbing her scalp, she winced. When she pulled her hand away, her fingers were dark and wet, glistening under the moonlight with her blood.
When voices approached, she hid in the gardens. Sharp leaves sliced at her arms and face like tiny knives, but she was beyond flinching.
Blood welled from a cut on her cheek, warm and immediate, and she wiped it away. Her feet left dark smears on the pale stone path, but that would only make it easier to find her way back.
She was deep in the belly of a maze, alone and bleeding, utterly lost, when a twig snapped behind her. Daisy stilled.
“Fee-fi-fo-fum,” a man called out through the boxwoods. “End of the line, little one.”
Suddenly, another tribute burst through the hedgerow like a deer in flight. Her dark hair and wild eyes said everything that needed to be said. When she ran, Daisy ran.
The hunter continued to call out taunts. Daisy bolted into a crossing, where beanstalks curved into arbors and vines twisted wildly about large pieces of abstract art.
They hid in the shadow of an enormous sculpture of a harp. The dark-haired woman, younger than Daisy with raccoon eyes from where her makeup had smeared, wore a ruby red gown that had torn at the shoulder.
As Daisy stared at the tribute, she mirrored her stunned expression. What a pair. The lace edge of their bras showed with every deep breath, and they had enough leaves and twigs in their hair to start a forest fire. Her chest heaved with the same desperate rhythm as Daisy’s.
They stared at each other.
No words. Understanding passed between them that went beyond language.
The hunter called out again, the same taunting rhyme, “Fee-fi-fo-fumb, I smell a feisty one.”
The girl’s chin trembled. Tears cut tracks through the dirt on her cheeks.
Maybe they could fight him off together. Maybe that’s what Daisy needed all along—an alliance.
Taking pity on the tribute, she reached out and grabbed her hand. But the tribute jerked her hand back as if Daisy had burned her. She looked at her the way Daisy looked at the hunters.
“It’s okay. I want to help you,” she whispered.
