PROLOGUE
“You can’t outrun what you’ve done, Violet!”
They’re right. I can’t. But I can try to outrun the person chasing me.
So I run.
Faster than my legs should be able to, faster than I can sustain. But it doesn’t matter. Every direction looks the same. I can’t remember which way I came from or which way leads out. I don’t know 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.
The fucking trees are all the same in the dark.
Branches catch at my arms and my face and tangle in my hair. I feel the sharp drag of them, the sting blooming across my skin, mixing with the damp blood on my hands I know isn’t mine.
Whoever is chasing after 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. Maybe even before that. 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. 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. Through the trees, I see a figure in the darkness. The shape of them is familiar in a way that makes my chest tighten.
I know this person.
And I know there’s nowhere left to run.
____
