The darkness calls to me. My wolf is waiting, hungry and impatient. I need to reach it. It’s moving too far ahead of me, so I pick up my pace and run.
“Poppy, don’t.” The voices chase me, multiplying.
Hands erupt from everywhere—the trees, the ground, the air itself. They grapple and cling, too many for one body. They grab my arms, my shoulders, my clothes, and I thrash against the restraint.
It’s no use. The demons have me.
I’m shadowed by a tall, towering, writhing mass of limbs that shouldn't exist on a single torso.
I lurch and lunge, and in a tangle of struggle, we crash to the ground. The impact knocks the breath from my lungs, and I claw at whatever I can reach.
Skin. Bark. Fur. The textures shifts under my fingers. "Get off me. Let me go!”
"Stop fighting, P." The demon's weight crushes me into the earth. "You're making this harder than it needs to be, baby girl."
I scream. Buck my hips. Try to twist free.
"You’re going to hurt her," the demon says, his voice cracking strangely.
“If we do nothing, she’ll hurt herself!”
Footsteps thunder in the shadows, and terror floods my veins, ice-cold. More demons are coming. More demons to drag me down, to tear me apart…
My master won’t like that. “Tharuzel will punish those who take what is his.”
"You’re nothis, Hallowind.” The demon's face hovers too close, its features blurring in the darkness. "Fight him. Fight him with everything you’ve got."
I fight. I scream, kick, and fight with everything within me, but it’s no use. I gain no ground. I’m pinned.
The demon holds me down, murmuring words I can't make sense of. Their grip is like iron. Unbreakable.
Hours pass. Maybe it’s minutes.
Time stretches like a pulled thread that won’t break.
More footsteps bring a new arrival.
It doesn’t matter how many try to keep me from my master, I am his.
I twist to find the black wolf, but it was swallowed by the shadows of the forest. The only trace of it is the two glowing red eyes peering through the darkness.
Watching. Calling to me.
Magic erupts around me. It shifts the earth beneath my back, and the forest turns liquid, hungry. It swallows my arms and my legs, dragging me down into its gullet.
"No, no, no?—"
"Poppy, stop fighting and look at me."
Hands press against my skin—my arms, my neck, my face. Every touch burns like acid. I’m being flayed alive from the outside inward.
I can't breathe.
I can't think.
I can't?—
The slap to my cheek stings hot and my eyes snap open.
