(Adelaide)
Adelaide exhaled so sharply she almost collapsed. She waited a full ten seconds before pushing off from the boulder, her legs shaking. Then she ran again—toward the deeper forest, where the trees choked out even the moonlight. Her foot caught on a bramble bush, thorns ripping into her calf. Warm blood trickled down her leg, but she didn’t slow. The line of fire the thorns left behind became another point to focus on—another reminder that she was still here, still bleeding, still moving.
She found another branch—sharper, smaller, cleaner—and grabbed it too. A makeshift dagger. Two points of wood. Two chances. It wasn’t enough, but it was something that belonged to her and not to his rules.
Her mind flashed with frantic possibilities:
I can lure him into a narrow ravine —
I c
