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“Run. Like the animal you are. Follow the wildness within.”
I feel more uncomfortable than wild in that moment, but I can’t let the evaluating sorcerers notice me hesitate.
With a jerk, I untie the cloak from my neck to let it fall on the path so it won’t tangle with my limbs. Then I push myself forward, scuttling in my crouched position along the packed dirt.
After a short distance, I decide it’ll feel better if my legs are squatting rather than kneeling, my feet propelling me instead of my knees.
As I adjust my stance, the voice hollers after me. “Deeper into the woods. Away from all the restrictions they’ve tried to place on us!”
I spring between the trees, wincing as broken twigs and sharp pebbles bite at my palms. The toe of my boot snags on a jutting root, and I sprawl forward, scraping my chin before I’m scrambling back up again.
Pain stings along my jaw as I hurtle onward, but I tune it out. I focus on the brush of the vegetation against my skin, on the hiss of my skirts against the ground.
The silk catches on a broken branch and tears. A strange sense of satisfaction passes through me at the rasp of sound, followed by a swell of horror.
I can’t be buying into this madness. I shouldn’t be enjoying anything about this moment.
But the conspiracy wouldn’t be growing if their ideals didn’t have a certain appeal. Maybe in some ways Iamthe sort of person they’d have wanted to recruit.
I scramble on through the darkness, my torn gown flapping around my legs, my fingernails digging into the dirt. I don’t know how long they expect me to keep this up.
Should I throw back my head and howl at the moon like a wolf, or would that be too much?
The idea kind of amuses me, which makes me uneasy all over again.
As I swerve around a tree trunk, fern fronds swiping across my cheek, my magic unfurls through my chest again. If I don’t want to be here, I can wipe out every other person in this forest, just like that.
I can force them to leave me alone. I can end this wretched madness.
I grit my teeth against it.
No. I’m fine. No one’s hurting me.
No one except my own wretched power. When I clamp down on it, it thrashes against my hold harder than before. Claws of pain rake across my ribs and down to my gut.
I swallow a gasp and dash onward, hoping whoever’s watching will attribute my stumbles to the uneven ground. As the pain digs in deeper, tears burn behind my eyes.
Even my broken soul knows that this bizarre display is wrong. But I can’t lash out the way it wants when I still know so little about our enemy.
With every thump of my feet, I will my roiling power to calm down. I can keep up this act for as long as I need. There’s no real threat here.
Then I stumble into a glade, and a pale gray rabbit leaps in front of me.
“Kill it!” the voice says, bouncing between the trees. “Tear it apart with your hands and offer up its life to the one who made us all!”
My heart lurches, and I lunge forward. My panic that I might fail the trial cuts through my nausea at the task.
I catch the softly furred body in my arms. My hands grope toward its neck.
I’ve killed rodents before—when I was desperate, when both my stomach and my power were gnawing at me to act.
Normally I’d have used a knife, but I know how to feel for the knobs of the spine—
Crack.
The body goes limp in my grasp. As I hold up its body to the thin beams of moonlight, the voice calls out again.
“Spill its blood. Dedicate it to the All-Giver!”
