Page 1 of Claimed By the Forest Reaper

THE SACRIFICE

They don’t even let me scream.

Rough hands shove me forward, fingers digging into my arms hard enough to bruise. The smell of torch smoke and stale fear clings to the mob around me. I thrash, but there are too many of them—always too many.

“You brought this on yourself,” hisses Marta, the butcher’s wife. Her breath reeks of ale.

I snap my head back, hoping to catch her nose with my skull. She jerks away, and I taste petty satisfaction. “Bitch,” she spits.

“Original,” I mutter. My voice shakes, but not enough for them to notice. I won’t give them that.

The forest looms ahead, a wall of shadow and twisted pines. The villagers stop at the tree line, their courage melting like butter over a flame. Old Man Crayford starts chanting that same stupid rhyme kids sing at festivals—*Beware the Reaper, he walks in the gloom, steal your last breath, drag you to the tomb*. His voice cracks.

Idiots. All of them.

Someone yanks the sack off my head. Cold air slaps my face, and I squint at the moonlit clearing. The trees here aren’t right. Their trunks bend like broken spines, branches clawing at nothing. Fog pools around their roots, thick and unnatural.

“Should’ve burned her,” someone mutters.

“The forest takes what it’s owed,” says Father Durran. His robes smell like incense and rot. “The curse demands a life.”

“I didn’t *curse* your damn sheep,” I say, twisting against the hands holding me. My heart hammers, but I lock the fear down tight. Anger’s safer. Anger’s familiar.

A boot kicks the back of my knee. I drop hard, gravel biting through my dress. Marta rips the necklace from my throat—my mother’s stupid good-luck charm, a carved oak leaf. She tosses it into the dark.

“Go on, witch. Pray your forest god shows mercy.”

The mob surges forward, pushing me into the underbrush. I stumble, catching myself on a thorny vine. It slices my palm open.

“Assholes!” I shout, whirling around.

But they’re already gone, their torches retreating like cowardly fireflies.

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The forest eats sound.

My breathing’s too loud. My footsteps crunch like thunder. I walk for what feels like hours, my legs shaky, my bare feet numb. The fog clings, damp and cold, seeping through my thin dress.

Everything looks the same. Gnarled trees. Moss-covered rocks. Shadows that twitch when I’m not looking.

*This is fine. You’ve foraged worse places.*

I press my bleeding hand to my side. The cut’s shallow, but it stings. My mother’s voice flits through my head—*Yarrow for wounds, lavender for calm*. Useless now. All my herbs are back in the village square, burning with the rest of my life.

A twig snaps behind me.

I freeze.

Nothing moves.

“Just a deer,” I say aloud. My voice doesn’t sound like mine.

The fog thickens. Shapes blur. I touch a tree trunk to steady myself—and jerk back. The bark’s wrong. Slimy, like wet leather. It leaves a grayish residue on my fingers.

*Don’t rub your eyes. Don’t lick your lips.*

I wipe my hand on my dress and keep walking.