Prologue
“Muriel,” someone was calling my name and tugging on my arm. I opened my eyes, squinting against my throbbing headache. “Wake up,” my sister said in a trembling whisper.
“What is it, Fleur?” I groaned. “Did the fire go out? Where’s Sabine?”
“She disappeared, remember? We have not seen her for a day and a night.” Fleur was speaking, but I barely heard her as I sat up and stared through the bars of a cage. Where I expected the walls of our home and the stone hearth, there was only forest.
“What is this?” I whispered. We sat in the center of a wooden cage made of branches as tall as a man and twice as long, lined with fur pelts. Beyond the bars, figures moved around a bonfire. A few men accompanied by giant dogs.
Fleur huddled closer to me. “They came in the night,” she whispere
