Page 8 of Their Fierce Little Monster

“Baron, please, this can wait until after the Choosing.” Anything to buy myself time to escape.”

“No, it can’t.” He breathes heavily. “And this is your chance to not be selected by a monster. That’s what you want, right?”

I hate this man, fury pumping through me. “You’re a coward, forcing me against my will.”

Sneering, he digs his fingernails into my arm and hurts me with how fast he forces me to walk. Pain spears up my arm, and I stumble on a stone when the wind blows violently from behind me, ripping my veil off my head.

For a second, it floats down ahead of us.

Innocent. Delicate. Wrongly beautiful.

I remember Nilly on the couch by the fire, stitching her love into the piece.

Then the Baron’s boot comes down hard on it, crushing it onto the dirt.

I cry out. “Nilly made that.” I don’t know what comes over me, but I kick him in the back of the knee. He stumbles forward, and I rip my arm free and run in the opposite direction.

He grunts behind me, yelling after me. But I run for my life. My thoughts are on the east side of town where I’d discovered a hole in the wall surrounding the village, where I’m going to escape.

A strong hand grabs the back of my dress and my hair, tugging hard enough that I cry out in pain. My knees buckle under me, and I fall to the dirt.

“Get the fuck up,” he snarls, yanking me backward, where I tumble sideways and onto my back. “You bitch, get up now!”

Fear pummels into me, crowding in my chest. “I’ve done nothing wrong.” This whole time I’ve been worried about being given to a monster, but the real beasts were already here.

He tugs me to my feet by my hair, and I groan, latching onto his hand where my scalp screams. I scramble to get up just as he snatches my arm. And we’re moving again.

I can barely breathe, my whole body trembling. “Please, just let me go.”

“Shut the fuck up.” He breaks into a chuckle, rushing us toward a homestead that appears abandoned—weeds overgrown and windows barred with planks of wood.

Behind us sit farm buildings and storage sheds that conceal us from the rest of the village, and it terrifies me that I’ve been brought here while everyone was preoccupied.

Then we zip around the corner, and before us, the flat land still needing to be plowed spreads outward to the far edges of the village wall.

Then I see three Moonstone guards in uniforms standing next to a wooden pyre of logs stacked upward within a ring of stones.

My heart squeezes and I flinch back, my brain refusing to understand what’s in front of me.

Then I see the ropes.

The stake.

And the black tar for fire, smeared on the bottom half of the logs that look wet.

I’m shaking, my feet skidding backward, my lungs tightening. Fear unravels through me.

No, no, no.

I draw in a breath then scream. And the Baron grins as though he’s been waiting for it all this time.

Chapter

Two

DAWN

Awhimper spills from my lips the longer I stare at the pyre. This, coupled with the distaste those in charge have shown me, means they’re going to rid the village of me.