Chapter 3: The Day She Escaped
1760 Words
Dinner came the way it always did—on a dented tin tray that scraped stone like a blade across bone. Watery broth. A crust of bread sharp enough to cut your gums. A chipped cup of lukewarm water that tasted faintly of rust and despair.
The girl who carried it was new. I smelled it on her—soap that hadn’t yet learned the stink of this place, fear not yet polished into obedience. Her steps were too quick, her eyes too clean.
She slid the tray under the bars and whispered, voice trembling like the flame in her lantern:
“Eat.”
I gave her a nod, nothing more. Words were dangerous here—they carried like footsteps, like screams. I reached for the tray, and something soft brushed my palm. A folded strip of cloth. My fingers closed over it as naturally as breath, and I felt the hidden weight inside: two thin wires, flat as secrets.
I didn’t look at her. Didn’t blink. Just murmured, “Thank you,” in a voice so low it could have been a sigh.
Her throat bobbed. She turned to leave—but then her hand froze on the top bolt. Her fingertips searched. Found nothing.
My pulse spiked.
She had forgotten to slide it home.
For one frozen heartbeat, the dungeon itself seemed to hold its breath. Then she stepped back, too quickly, and walked away, shoes whispering against stone.
The top bolt was open.
It would take two things to leave this cell: a way to open the lower lock, and a willingness to bleed.
I had both.
---
The wires were cold against my skin as I palmed them from the cloth. They smelled faintly of oil and iron—a smell I had memorized through a thousand nights of silence, listening to the guards and their keys. I slid the tray under the cot with my foot and sat cross-legged on the floor, the chains clinking like a cruel lullaby.
Ten years in this hole had taught me patience. Patience and pain.
The lock was old. A reluctant mouth. I fed it wire and memory, coaxing its stubborn teeth. Tap. Drag. Twist. The air trembled with the tiny music of pins falling into place.
Footsteps above. The drip of water down stone. I listened past it all, breathing slow, like during contractions when crying out meant a hand on your throat to silence you. Out. Hold. Out.
Click. One pin. Another. The last gave with a sigh.
The door didn’t swing open. It exhaled, like it knew what it meant to be tired of holding.
But I wasn’t free yet. The cuffs on my wrists chained me to the wall, cruel circles that had kissed my bones for a decade. I’d long since worn grooves into my skin. Now they were raw, bleeding, perfect.
I looped the cloth around my wrists to give me grip and yanked the chain to my knee, bracing my foot against the wall. Metal groaned. Bone answered. Skin tore. My breath fogged the cold air.
“More,” I whispered to myself. To my wolf. To the girl I used to be.
I pulled until the stone cracked with a sound sweeter than any prayer. The cuff slid free, slick with blood. I spat the cloth from my teeth and attacked the second shackle with a fury that tasted of iron and moonlight. When the last bolt ripped loose, I staggered forward, hands trembling, wrists burning like fire had kissed them.
Free.
The word was a blade and a balm.
---
The corridor outside smelled of wolfsbane and rot. They had steeped the walls in it, poisoned the stones so deep I thought my wolf would curl up and die in my marrow. But tonight she stirred. She stretched. She pressed her muzzle to my ribs and whispered, Run.
I slipped through the half-open door and shut it gently behind me. If anyone checked before dawn, it would look locked.
Twelve paces to the first wall. Five to the stairs. Seventeen steps, one cracked at the lip. I knew this dungeon by heart. I had mapped it in the dark while my body healed from the births, while my mind crawled the walls for escape routes.
At the first landing I crouched beneath the grate and tasted the night. Rain. Pine. The wild tang of river chewing stone. Air so clean it hurt.
“The world is still out there,” I whispered. And my wolf answered with a low growl that sounded like go.
---
The servants’ passage yawned ahead—narrow, paneled in old wood that smelled of secrets. Voices drifted down from the upper floors: men laughing, careless, certain they owned this night like every night before.
I moved like silence wearing skin. Past the laundry room, past the storeroom reeking of tinctures that had kept my wolf caged for years. Past the dumbwaiter where I’d once hidden a scrap of bread because hunger taught you to love even crumbs.
At the back stair I froze. Lantern light striped the floor in gold. A shadow crossed it. A guard.
I slid into the laundry and pressed behind damp linens that smelled of vinegar and despair. His boots thudded softly, rhythm steady. He paused. Sniffed.
Blood has a voice. It screams where sweat only whispers.
I held my breath. My wolf went still as ice.
The guard muttered a curse and kept moving. When his shadow vanished, I slipped out and climbed.
---
The last door loomed ahead, barred with a wooden latch worn silver by a hundred hands. My fingers closed over it, trembling. I lifted.
The night hit me like a lover I’d never met but always dreamed of.
Air. Real air—thick with rain and the green breath of trees. It burned my lungs and kissed my skin. I could have fallen to my knees and sobbed. I could have prayed, if I still believed in gods that didn’t wear human faces.
Instead I ran.
The yard stretched wide, lanterns throwing lazy halos across wet stone. Beyond the wall, the forest crouched like a promise. I kept to the hedge, my body a ghost, the broken cuffs clutched against my belly to keep them silent.
The wall was spiked. Of course it was. I found the place where ivy climbed thick as rope, used it as a ladder, and went up. The spikes tore skin. Blood warmed my ribs. I didn’t stop.
I dropped into the grass beyond and lay flat, lungs heaving, face pressed to dirt sweet as honey.
A shout split the night. Then another.
“Gate!”
I ran.
---
The forest took me in like a mother too long denied. Branches clawed my arms, roots caught my feet, but the ground was freedom and the wind was a hymn. Boots thundered behind me, voices snapping like whips.
The trees thinned. The world fell away.
A cliff rose before me, its edge a black lip above a mouth of water. The river below churned white and furious, its roar drowning the men crashing through the brush behind me. Spray leapt like ghosts, cold and cruel, kissing my face.
No rope. No time. No fear.
I turned as they burst from the trees—three shadows, guns glinting, knives flashing like they thought metal could keep me.
“Stop,” one barked, authority sharp as steel.
“Please,” another added, mock-sweet.
The third just smiled, the kind of smile that meant pain.
My wolf rose in my bones, teeth bared in a grin that wasn’t human.
“I will not go back,” I said, and the words tasted like prophecy.
They fanned out. Confident. Men like this forget fear. They think cages make gods.
I took a step back. The river’s breath licked my spine.
“Come away,” the first man coaxed, lowering his gun. “You don’t want this.”
“I want my children.” My voice cracked the dark like a whip. “Do you?”
He flinched. Just a flicker. But I saw it.
The quiet one moved first, lunging like a striking snake. I didn’t dance away. I stepped in. My hand clamped his wrist, twisted hard. Bone popped. His knife clattered. I slammed my elbow into his ribs and shoved him to his knees.
The second came fast. I drove the heel of my hand into his throat. He gagged, stumbled back, eyes bulging.
The third raised his gun. Too slow. I kicked his knee sideways. It folded with a scream.
Three men groaning in the dirt like the dogs they were.
And me—on the edge of the world, blood on my hands, wind in my hair, the river roaring below like a god that wanted tribute.
I gave it mine.
I jumped.
---
The fall stole my breath and shredded my scream. Air howled past, fingers cold and greedy in my hair. For a heartbeat I thought I’d die laughing. Because freedom felt like flying.
The river hit like stone. Ice wrapped my chest, slammed my ribs, spun me under. Darkness coiled tight, squeezing air from my lungs.
Kick, my wolf snarled.
I kicked. The current seized me, dragged me through a throat of rock and foam, spun me like a coin. My arms burned, my fingers clawed water, my ears roared with a thousand drums.
Up. Break. Breathe.
The sky tore open above me in a flash of stars. I gulped air like a thief stealing gold. A shot cracked the night. Water exploded near my shoulder. Another. Then the river bent, and the cliff—and the men—vanished.
I let the current take me. Let it hurl me through a world black and wild, until its fury gentled and the reeds brushed my arms like soft hands.
I crawled to shore on bleeding knees, collapsed on the stones, and stared up at a sky too big to believe in. Stars burned like a thousand promises no one could break.
My lips cracked around words I’d carved on the walls of my soul for ten years.
“I will come back,” I whispered to the night, to the river, to the three small hearts scattered like seeds. “One by one, I’ll take back what’s mine.”
The wind stroked my hair. Somewhere behind me, men shouted at a darkness that no longer cared.
And the wolf inside me lifted her head to the stars and howled.
- Writer
