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A laugh tears out of me.

It sounds awful. Half laugh, half sob, and completely fucking wrong.

But I’m not finished.

“I wanted cider and funnel cake and shitty haunted houses. I wanted to get drunk with Mariah and Ali, scream at people in masks, take embarrassing pictures we’d regret tomorrow, and go the fuck home.”

Tears blur my vision.

“And now I have dead women bowing to me. The fucking ground knows my name. There’s a mark around my wrist I can’t get rid of, and every time I touch one of you, this place decides I’ve completed another piece of some ritual I never fucking agreed to.”

My chest heaves.

“And my friends won’t wake up.”

There.

That’s the one.

All the anger holding me together finally cracks.

My shoulders sag, and suddenly I’m not furious anymore.

I’m fucking terrified.

I look at the three of them through tears I can’t stop now.

“What if they don’t wake up?”

Malakai moves toward me but I back away. “No.”

He stops instantly, which makes it worse because he listens. All three of them keep listening to me while the fucking ground doesn’t.

“What if I killed them by bringing them here?”

“You didn’t.” Ezra’s voice is quiet but certain.

I look at him. “You don’t know that.”

“No.” He comes closer. “But I know you didn’t do this.”

“I drank the cider.”

“So did hundreds of people.”

“I entered the Hunt.”

“So did hundreds of people.”

“I pulled the ribbon.”

His expression changes. “You pulled from a barrel I filled with black.”

I stop only for him to step closer. “There was no red ribbon.”

My chest heaves.

“You didn’t choose this.” He points toward the floor. “It chose you.”