PROLOGUE
The trees are all the same in the dark.
I run, my lungs burning and my legs moving faster than they should be able to, faster than I can sustain, but it doesn’t matter because every direction looks the same and I don’t know which way I came from or which way leads out, or if there even is an out anymore, just the endless press of trees and shadow and the growing certainty that I’m not getting away.
Branches catch at my arms and my face and tangle in my hair, and I feel them more now, the sharp drag of them, the sting starting to bloom across my skin, mixing with the damp warmth on my hands – the blood, I know it’s blood, I just don’t know whose.
There are footsteps behind me, but they aren’t running. They’re steady. Unhurried and certain.
Whoever is following me knows something I don’t, knows that I can run for as long as my body holds out and it still won’t change anything, because this didn’t start here in the woods – it started the moment I walked into that house weeks ago, and maybe even before that, and all I’m doing now is stretching out the space between then and what comes next.
I trip on a root and go down hard, my palms scraping against the forest floor, and for a moment I just stay there on my knees because my body doesn’t want to get up again. The footsteps stop somewhere behind me. I can feel whoever it is standing there, waiting, letting me have this moment because they know I’m not going anywhere.
I turn my head and through the trees I see a figure in the darkness, the shape of them familiar in a way that makes my chest tighten. I know this person. I know them better than I know myself at this point. But in the dark, with blood drying on my hands and the weight of what we just did pressing down on my ribs, I’m not even sure if I really do anymore.
I push myself up, my body protesting, and start to run again even though I understand now that there’s nowhere to go, that this ends one way no matter how long I delay it, that eventually I’ll stop and turn and face it.
But not yet.
“You can’t outrun what you’ve done, Violet.”
The voice comes from behind me, calm and clear, threading through the dark with terrifying ease.
I know that voice.
I know exactly who it belongs to.
And still, I don’t stop running.
