At first, all Losa saw was a shadow.

It rocketed from the undergrowth toward her, a huge and swift blackness flashing in her peripheral vision until its immense weight slammed into her side. Before the disorientated fae could react—cry out, flinch, run—she felt the serrated edges of teeth clamping down on one slender foreleg, their hard points pressing almost to the bone, and then an explosion of pain sent flaming shrapnel from the crater of her dislocated shoulder all the way into her panicked brain. The gut-turning crunch of the joint being pulled free from its home and snapping its connecting ligaments was lost within the sudden noise of her agonized shriek. Shock numbed her from everything except the hellish throbbing tormenting her limb. She didn’t feel the mud clinging to her fur like slime, or the ache of her ribs that now seemed a distant dream compared to the fresh torture radiating from her shoulder. It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts—

“Hello darling, want to play?” The monster’s voice was nearly lost in the chaos of Losa’s blaring thoughts. On reflex her wide, horrified gaze turned to meet his demonic portals. Green. Ice cold. Merciless. Like a serpent’s.

The caress of his tongue on her trembling jaw was enough to snap her from the spell of shock. “NO!” It tore from her sooty muzzle in a ragged sob, her body beginning to convulsively flail to escape from this beast’s ravenous presence. Losa tried to roll back to her paws—but her dislocated limb refused to cooperate, and the laceration traced down her side restricted any quick movements that might have given her at least half a head start. Wounded paws slipped uselessly on the slick mire and she landed with a pathetic thud right where she started.

Terror made her reckless. With a snarl the girl twisted her hips to aim her back paws into the brute’s broad chest, hoping to push off him and gain enough distance to perhaps lurch back to all fours. In the same gesture, she brought her front legs forward—gasping harshly at the acid jolt electrifying her screeching nerves—and clawed at the ground. Escape. She had to escape. Every process of higher cognition had been brutally erased by pure, undiluted instinct, and that instinct commanded the sable sylph to seek safety as soon as physically possible.

Losa knew that this encounter meant death. Her mind rifled through impressions of blood, hot and thick and matting her silken pelt, of knives cutting across her flesh in such a way to maim without killing, of atrocities that inspired so much visceral sickness that all the girl could do was recall with startling clarity how she felt but nothing of what she saw, and all of those things echoed in this gladiator’s feverish stare—multiplied, amplified—and it was as if the nightmares that hunted her footsteps had taken on skin to kill her at last. This was no dream. She could not wake up. And Losa had no intention of staying here to suffer more of what had broken her soul almost completely.