She opened the door warily to reveal the young woman standing in the hall, clutching a tray.
“Thank you,” she said, taking it gratefully.
Holly said nothing, stepping back and then retreating down the hall with a swish of her skirts.
Okay then.
Nadine set the tray carefully on the bed. It was made of what she thought might be teak, though she wasn’t sure why she thought that. The wood had been painted by someone with a highly artistic eye, who had painstakingly rendered a scene from the forest: tall pines climbed around the edges of the recessed surface, with ravens flying from their crests, wings outstretched and shimmering.
She took a sip of the tea. Despite Holly’s assurance that the tea was weak, it still tasted quite bitter and left a thick coating on her tongue. She forced herself to drink it anyway, until the cup fell from her hand. Nadine stared, startled by the smash of china and how far away it sounded.
???????
She woke up in the woods.
At first she thought it was another one of her dreams. The mist was circling thickly over the ground now and the chitter of insects and the haunting coo of owls provided an uneasy soundscape making her feel as if she were being watched by unseen (eyeless) things out there from beyond the trees. It made her remember, with a violent wrench, those shades with the scorpion eyes.
In wilderness like this, it was easy to forget that civilization existed. The trees that grew here did not bow to mortal laws, and the creatures that hunted beneath their shadows didn’t, either.
They answered only to the blood that pulsed through the veins of their prey.
(red in both tooth and claw)
“Hello?” she called out. “Hello? Please! Help me!”
The wind tossed her voice carelessly, dashing it with muddy echoes. Dark things fluttered from the trees, their wings flashing briefly in the moonlight. Not ravens but something darker.
Sharper.
Bats?
Nadine turned around, trembling. Her dress was wet and wrinkled, plastered to her body like a second skin. It had rained again while she was out here, clearly, and mud was sticking to her skirt, adding weight to the linen and making it drag against her legs. Her empty stomach was roiling like the coils of fog that hovered in the air like silk gauze.
It was dark.
Sodark.
Just like my nightmares.She stumbled forward, feeling sluggish. The trees spun around her, the pointed tops spinning like a carousel. It made her feel drunk. The last thing she remembered, Holly had brought her that tea—and then—
She had woken up here.
Poisoned—and then drugged . . .
They brought me here to die.
From the very beginning, they had been grooming her for this fucking hunt. Stoking her fear as if it was a hot fire, and then standing back to watch the blaze.
She was still alive so perhaps it had been left to the servants to bring her here. She could imagine that. There was no fun in killing something that already looked dead. That wasn’t sporting enough for this fucking family. Even Noelle had been allowed a brief fight before her death.
I shouldn’t have screamed.
Nadine remembered the look on Holly’s face, and how quickly she had left. Odessa or Ben had obviously enlisted the maid to drug her and the woman hadn’t wanted to wait around.
And now—hale or not—she was going to die.
A crack made her jump. And then a tree branch twenty feet to her right was suddenly blown off in a cloud of wood fibers. She covered her mouth to silence herself, springing to duck behind a tangled-looking bush that had dark green thorny leaves.
“Nadine.” Ben’s voice echoed menacingly in the clearing. “Where are you hiding, little deer? I heard you scream.”
