scended into utter c

en who had been standing guard

face and hands slick with blood-

ht at Ethan and let

aid calmly. "But if you keep letting he

ta grabbed the white dress Cara had tossed bes

she had just made onto the floor, lifted he

r a long time, so long that darkness came and went, daw

e had almost forgotten what it felt like to sta

new which day she would be dragged into an octagonal cage she had never seen bef

s... all for a

brutal hunger game, the one left

hat was all her l

siness, had dragged her

had been shot

tore into his chest, too close to the heart

allic sweetness of blood, learned for

ed to take her hom

rose bristling with poison thorns. An

ecause of their thorns," he said. "With me her

f the senior members in the organization

border manhunt, he took everything on

together, she had pulled

. She learned to hold spatulas inst

s gun was point

him far t

red about, no matter who they we

d Delta, each of them had been cut down, their hands a

han for years vanished from the organiza

Cara's face, there was no w

t in the villa. She had been waiting

f who truly mattered to him

el of a gun pressed against Greta's foreh

re. Anyone who hurts my

ess times before, to anyone wh

ed that today, he woul

iron

of her mouth and met his

nt me to pay? My life

ss, Ethan's e

woman, yet for some reason, he couldn

ment, the gun f

ment. No food for thr

her, but she had hurt Cara. Punish

rward, bowing to G

walk with us. Don't make it h

t time, but he had turned awa

ned. She nodde

ed a silver ring onto th

ing to rest, its soft clinking somehow sh

receding figure, as if something c

k basement, a faint, mockin

her out of the abyss, bloodily w

hree days in this basement, a

n a whim from a small stall at th

te her first tast

he officially proposed, he would ge

ed on someone else's hand. Keeping

how to love. And yet, he had forgotten everything,

in the first place. Without a reason

d release her, and she would walk

not even three days had pas