The tribute’s gaze dropped to Daisy’s blood-stained dress. “You’ll only get me caught.” Then she was gone, rushing off into the night and leaving Daisy all alone.
She deserved that.
Trust no one.
She couldn’t hold it against the girl for only doing what Daisy had done all along.
She waited behind the harp a while longer, but when her eyes got tired, she forced herself to move. The necklace couldn’t be far?—
Hadrian Welles stepped out from the hedges with a smile that promised nothing quick, nothing kind, nothing merciful.
“Where were we?” He walked slowly, cracking his knuckles with each deliberate step.
Daisy staggered back, her shoulders pressing against the hedge wall. The branches prickled through the beaded silk of her gown, a thousand tiny warnings she had no way to heed.
Trapped.
“I remember—right here.”
Breath exploded in her lungs as his fist connected with her stomach before she registered the movement. The world folded inward, collapsing to a single point of white-hot compression beneath her ribs where sight and sound only whistled.
Her knees buckled. Gravel bit into her palms as she crumpled, mouth gaping like a landed fish, diaphragm seizing against a vacuum as she fell to her back and mouthed timber.
Copper flooded her tongue. The night sky wheeled overhead, stars smearing into streaks, as the mist turned to rain. Somewhere far away, a bell tolled. The wet rasp of her throat opened as she swallowed, forgetting how to breathe. Curling to her side like an animal curls around its wounds.
“Get up.”
Timber.
He kicked her side. “I said, get up!”
Her eyes welled, and her vision blurred. When he ordered her to stand a third time, and she didn’t move, he yanked her up by the arm.
Her legs tangled beneath her, and she spun, twisting her dead weight helplessly as he dragged her to her feet. “Stand up, you fucking slut.”
“Timber,” Daisy wheezed, falling back to her knees as he dragged her over the pebbled ground.
Her fingers wouldn’t cooperate. They were shaking violently.
“Timber. Timber. Timber.” Her voice was paralyzed with fear, her silent pleas lost on the breeze.
He dragged her to a lawn, the cold, damp grass forming a slick carpet beneath her back as he pulled her like a caveman towards a large stone.
“You had to run, didn’t you?”
He threw her over the flat surface of the boulder, knocking the wind out of her once more.
“Tim—bah—” She gasped.
He shoved her shoulders down and ripped her dress from collar to hem. Cold air covered her back as he shoved down the silk shorts at her hips.
Daisy scrambled for purchase, feet scraping to push up her legs, but he shoved her head down, forcing her cheekbone to smash against the stone.
“Don’t fucking move.”
She disobeyed, curling her shaking finger over her thumb in the sign of the letter T.
Metal clanked. Fabric rasped. Wiry hair grazed her shaking thighs as hard knees punched into her tensed muscles.
