I fight it, but it laughs in my face.
"Oh, you'll come again, won't you?" he taunts. "On my fingers. While heaven watches and your saints weep."
He’s right. Because as I fall—again, harder, messier, shaking apart under his hands and mouth—I feel it deep inside:
The monster in the woods didn’t take me.
Iofferedmyself.
Chapter Nine
Light touches me first. It rests against my closed eyes and warms them gently.
For a breath, I do not move. I lie still, floating between sleep and waking. The forest lingers there, thick and warm. The press of leaves beneath my back. The weight of arms around me.
I keep my eyes closed. If I do not move, perhaps it will fade.
But my body aches. The soreness rests low in my hips, deep in the tender places between my thighs. When I shift beneath the blanket, heat spreads where his mouth travelled, where his hands held me down against earth and breath and leaf. A faint sting grazes the side of my neck where the skin is thinner. I lift my hand and touch it.
Two small crescents meet my fingertips, raised and sore beneath my jaw. When I press them, a pulse leaps under my touch. My breath thins as his mouth returns to me in fragments—the heat, the pull. My stomach knots. My body answers in a way that makes my cheeks burn.
I open my eyes. The rafters above me stand clear and solid. Dust hangs in the pale light. The blanket is twisted at my waist. Something inside me feels altered. A door left unlatched. A window cracked open to air I cannot close out.
Elena’s warmth should be at my back, but my hand meets only cold linen when I reach for her.
A thin sound escapes my throat as I turn.
"Elena?"
The space beside me is empty. The blanket lies folded back.
I push myself upright too quickly. The room tilts. My heart strikes hard against my ribs.
"Elena?"
Silence answers.
I swing my legs over the edge and scramble toward the ladder, nearly missing the first rung. The wood bites into my palms as I descend too fast.
"Mama?" My voice cracks, louder now.
I cross the room in three strides and tear back the curtain.
The bed is empty. Blankets folded. Pillow untouched. The air leaves my lungs in a rush.
"No."
I turn toward the hearth. Ash lies cold and gray. The table stands bare. No bowls. No cups. No sound of breath beyond my own.
For a moment, I do not breathe. The room closes in around me. My heart begins to pound so hard it blurs my vision. My fingers clutch at the curtain as though it might steady me.
I let him in.
I have failed.
I let him live and he has taken them.
I stumble backward, turning in place, searching the corners of the room as if they might appear from shadow. My breath tears in and out of me, my pulse roars in my ears.
