The velvet world she’d known was far behind her now. No perfume, no warm silk pressed against her hips, no Sarah’s voice floating from the corridors like incense. Only cold earth beneath her bare feet, and the kind of wind that tasted like iron and ash.
Jasmine walked with nothing but a cloak wrapped tight around her shoulders. The road had disappeared hours ago, swallowed by trees older than memory, their twisted limbs clawing at the sky. Her breath ghosted in front of her. She didn’t shiver. She didn’t pause. Not even when the howls began.
They hadn’t come for her yet.
But they were circling.
The forest was alive in a way the city never was. It wasn’t just the sound of wind dragging its fingers through the leaves or the whisper of things that slept during the day and woke only when t
