I have to move. I have to get away. I’ve walked right into a trap I thought I’d set. And now it’s closing. Fast.
Hands seize me from behind. A sharp yank, a rough, crushing grip.
Gloved fingers clamp over my mouth, my shoulders, pinning me before I can scramble away. My pulse spikes like a struck bell.
I twist, my teeth snapping at the hand stifling my mouth, but thick leather blocks the bite. A cry builds in my throat, but it dies beneath the pressure of the palm crushing my jaw. I can’t make a sound. I can’t breathe. No one can hear me.
No one is coming.
I thrash—wild, desperate, feral. I buck and twist, fighting against their arms, refusing to make this easy. My legs kick. My nails scrape skin and armor and anything I can reach. But it’s like fighting stone. Their grip doesn’t loosen. My lungs scream for air. My limbs burn. Each heartbeat crashes like symbols in my ears.
I’m being taken. Like Clara. Like all the girls before her. A sacrifice ripped from the world and cast into darkness. A warm body to feed the cold machine while the rest of the kingdom raises their glasses and toasts to power, blissfully unaware their comfort is built on slaughter.
I made the same mistake every heroine makes: Ithought I was different. I thought I was special. I thought that, against all odds, I would be the one to stop it. That I’d change the story.
But Alder has always been a step ahead. Watching. Calculating. Pressing until I cracked just enough to let him slip back in. He’s always known how to twist things—how to make me second-guess my instincts, question my truths. How to rebuild my thoughts until I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began.
It makes me sick to think I ever believed I loved him. Like his PR team, I thought I’d be the one who fixed him, who transformed him into the man I believed he could be.
But no woman can change a man. She can only change herself.
And I was never fighting to change him. Not really. I was fighting the version of myself who knew not to let him win.
And I am done losing.
I am not the same woman I was six months ago. I am not fragile. I am not breakable. And I am not going down without a fight.
Thirty-One
Rage ignites, fast and consuming, burning through thehelplessness that had begun to frost my veins. It melts into something fierce, something violent. A scream rips from my throat, raw, unhinged, as I drive my elbow back.
Bone hits bone.
One of the guards grunts, the air punched from his lungs, and his grip falters just enough. I twist, teeth bared, legs kicking. My foot connects with a shin, a knee, and I slip free for one breathless second. I sprint, vision blurry with adrenaline, pulse vibrating like a gong in my chest.
Up. Oh, God, I’m going up.
The realization hits midstep, but I keep moving. I’m doing exactly what every doomed heroine in every slasher movie I’ve ever screamed at does—racing up the stairs, away from escape, toward a room with one exit and no good outcomes.
“Not the stairs, you idiot,” I whisper to myself, breath ragged, “not the stairs—” But I’m already there, crashing against doors one after another. Locked.Locked. Locked.
The third one gives. I shove it open and lurch inside—
A thick-gloved hand slams over my mouth, wrenching me back before I can even inhale to scream.
Another hand clamps around my arm, bruising and brutal, and I’m dragged into the hall as the door bangs shut behind me.
Back down the stairs we go. Back through the castle’s throat, into a hidden passageway, into the dark.
My stomach lurches as stone grinds against stone and the last sliver of light disappears and I’m sealed in the dark.
It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the torchlight lining the walls. The passage is narrow, carved from rough, unpolished stone, and it stinks of damp earth and something older—something rotten beneath the surface. My heels scrape uselessly against the uneven floor as I’m hauled deeper into the belly of the castle, into some secret artery no sunlight has ever touched.
The walls press closer with every step. The ceiling lowers. The floor tilts. I can’t tell how far we’ve gone, how long we’ve been moving. My body aches. My lungs burn. My voice is swallowed by gloved hands.
And then cold air slaps my skin. The stone gives way to sky as we step out of a doorway carved into the castle’s exterior.
The hidden door grinds shut, vanishing into the castle’s stone skin. Above, gray clouds sag over the sea, the sun nothing more than a smear of light behind them.
