Leave all items of value at home.
Clothing will be provided.
Do not be late.
Do not contact anyone regarding your departure.
The Feast of the Fallen commences
Saturday evening at dusk.
Further instructions will be provided upon arrival.
* * *
May fortune forever favor you,
—J.T.
* * *
She was approved. This was really going to happen. She raced up the stairs, barely able to contain her squeak of joy.
Friday. That was five days away. So soon, yet it would take an eternity to get there. Her body was a jumble of nervous excitement and unanswered questions.
Who was J.T.? Were they a man or a woman—or an organization? Were they the founder of The Feast? Whoever they were, she was grateful to have found her way onto their mailing list.
The days that followed were the longest of her life. She walked to work, fed sheets through the press, smiled at Maryanne, deflected questions about her improving mood, and walked home. But Daisy’s perception of the world had changed. Everything seemed sharper, more vivid, as if she’d been awakened to possibilities she hadn’t known existed.
Lying in her narrow bed, too awake to sleep, she stared at the water-stained ceiling, repeating the safeword like a prayer.
“Timber. Timber. Timber…”
What if she forgot? What if, in a moment of fear, her mind went blank? She thought of every possible scenario her imagination could conjure. Mostly, she pictured herself pinned beneath a stranger’s weight, breath stolen by fear, hands trespassing like grabby thieves. She suffered the recurring thought so frequently, it inevitably became a dream. In her nightmare, her mind went blank, and the safeword dissolved like sugar in rain.
She’d read about that happening, people forgetting their own names under stress. Forgetting how to speak entirely. So she practiced the sign language version—thumb tucked between index and middle finger, fist closed, forming the signal for letter T.
She made the shape in the darkness, over and over, until her hand cramped and her eyes burned from exhaustion. When her worries screamed loudest, she got out of bed and did push-ups. The first night, she managed twelve before her arms gave out, her body collapsing onto the cold floor, chest heaving. She rolled to her back and stared at the ceiling. Twelve push-ups, and her body had already surrendered. How was she supposed to survive a hunt?
She rolled over. Pressed her palms to the floor and surged back into position on shaky arms. Every push carried more gravity as if the universe truly wanted to hold her down, but she refused to go into the unknown, weak and unprepared.
Little victories came when she pushed herself beyond her natural limits.
“Thirteen,” she ground out the number between clenched teeth, arms screaming as every muscle trembled in protest. “Four…teen.” She shut her eyes, ordering her body not to give out. “Fif…teen.”
She thought about the hunters. Men who had paid fortunes for the privilege of chasing her through the dark. Men who likely had personal trainers, private chefs, and bodies built for pursuit.
“Six…teen.” A sort of indignant rage caught fire inside of her, blazing at her back like a force pushing her forward. “Seventeen,” she growled, lifting her nose off the floor in a triumphant sob.
“Eighteen—”
Her arms buckled. She hit the floor hard enough to taste blood where she’d bitten her tongue. But she was smiling.
Eighteen was more than twelve, and tomorrow she’d do more than eighteen.
By Thursday, she managed twenty-four, but a heavy and unexpected weight dragged her down. Anticipation had curdled into something darker. Trepidation. Dread. The creeping terror of walking into an unknown experience that no amount of training could prepare her for.
She tossed and turned in bed. If she did doze off, she awoke abruptly with a gasp. The sheets twisted around her legs like restraints, and every time she closed her eyes, she saw shadows moving in the darkness. Hunters. Strangers. Hands reaching for her from places she couldn’t see. Tearing at her clothes and wrenching her body apart.
