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The thorns rip through my palms.

Blood runs between my fingers.

I pull harder.

The root snaps.

The Harvest shrieks.

I stumble forward.

“So you don’t get to take that away now.”

Another root catches my wrist.

The red mark flares beneath it.

For one horrible second, the pain is so intense my knees buckle.

I see Mercy beneath the Earth.

Ezra behind the mask.

Rhett without a heartbeat.

Kai severed from the land.

Every choice this thing has stolen while demanding everyone else make theirs.

Fuck. That.

I wrench my arm free hard enough to tear skin.

“You don’t get to spend all night demanding that I choose and then change the fucking rules because you’re afraid of what my answer is going to be.”

The Harvest recoils.

Actually fucking recoils.

And there it is.

Not anger.

Not hunger.

Fear.

The thing that has terrorized this farm for two hundred and thirty-five years is afraid.

Not of me.

Of this.

Of a choice it cannot control.

I look through the flames.

Straight at Ezra.