The carriage lurched to a halt on the muddy track, horses stamping nervously as if the air itself unsettled them. Genevieve stepped down, her skirts catching on the damp earth, and the sight waiting ahead struck her with the force of a slap. Viktor Barinov stood twenty paces off, shirtless, chopping wood in a slow, purposeful rhythm that bordered on ritual. Sunlight poured over him as though he had paid it in blood: shoulders broad and scarred, purple-black hair tied back, sweat carving a line down the groove of his spine before vanishing beneath the waist of his trousers. Each swing of the axe landed with a clean, vicious THOCK, the kind of sound bones make just before they split.
For a single heartbeat she indulged a forbidden fantasy. If she had been quiet back then—if she had never fought him, never clawed her way into his temper, never made herself the problem—would this have been her life? Viktor chopping wood while she carried their child on her back, humming as though the world had gentled for once instead of sharpening its teeth. A cabin with no guests, no jeers, no threats. Peace stretching out over her like a heavy quilt. Safe. Soft. Smothering.
The thought chilled her far worse than danger ever had. She missed the creatures who had stalked her nights—the wendigo, the skinwalker, whatever name fit their teeth best. She missed their heat, their growls, the way their presence turned the darkness into something alive. A life of folding linens and rocking babies while this false Viktor asked permission to sit near the cradle? No bite. No fire. Just quiet days bleeding into quieter nights. That emptiness frightened her more than a week without her favorite bed-warmer.
Alice leaned close, her lips brushing Genevieve's ear with a whisper that felt like a mouth opening in the dark. "Don't fret," she murmured. "Those two are playing their little script. They're waiting for their main star to arrive."
Genevieve turned. Alice's painted smile stayed sweet, but her eyes were ancient, cold, and ravenous. She placed a light hand on Genevieve's back and pushed. "This is your final test, child. I'm only here to watch."
Genevieve stumbled forward and the world tightened around her like a jaw snapping shut. The air grew syrup-thick in her lungs; each breath tasted of iron and heat. Viktor lowered the axe, wiped his brow with the back of his forearm, and set the blade aside with deliberate care. Then he walked toward her—slow, sure, gleaming with sweat and sun.
And then he did the one thing that proved beyond doubt that none of this was real.
He opened his arms and hugged her first.
Genevieve went rigid. She remembered every time she had forced him into public embraces: dragging him close by the chain around his neck, pressing his face into her breasts while she smiled sweetly for the other planters, making him perform devotion so no one questioned who held the leash. She had made him kneel. She had made him crawl. She had made him beg just to touch her hand.
But this Viktor? This one hugged her willingly, almost eagerly, as if the gesture belonged to him rather than her command.
She inhaled once, slow and deep, and his scent—pine, sweat, fresh-cut wood—slid into her lungs like warm honey. Illusion or not, it was Viktor. Her dragon. The only creature in all the worlds who had ever truly felt like hers. For a single treacherous heartbeat, she let the comfort wrap around her ribcage like a memory she had lost.
Then she loved herself more.
Her fingertips brushed the axe he had left leaning against the chopping block. The wood was still warm from his palm. She curled her hand around the handle, feeling the weight settle into her grip. One clean swing and Ayoka's skull would split like a melon. One more and the child's laughter would stop forever. Then she could take her time with this false Viktor—pin him down, carve her name into his chest, remind him who had once made him beg. She had done it twice before. She could do it again.
But the thought tasted wrong. Sour. Like a hymn sung in a dead tongue.
She took a single step past the chopping block, toward the cypress line where the real world should have begun. The ground rippled. The sky folded inward like wet paper collapsing in rain. And suddenly she stood in a vast, dim room lit by guttering candles. A massive copper bathtub sat in the center, steaming with black water that smelled of rust, rot, and old blood. Alice lounged inside it, naked, skin milk-white, hair drifting like spilled ink, eyes glowing yellow as a predator's.
"Going somewhere, child?" Alice purred, her voice echoing from corners that didn't exist.
Genevieve raised the axe.
Alice smiled wider, revealing too many teeth arranged too neatly to belong to anything human. "Third time's the charm… or the curse. Shall we see?"
Genevieve brought the axe down.
The blade struck the rim of the tub and the world shattered like glass dropped from a great height.
She awoke choking on her own breath, clawing at her scalp, shrieking for a mirror. A trembling house-girl brought one, hands shaking. Genevieve stared at her reflection—and laughed, high and cracked and delighted. Bald. Smooth as a worm. Not a single strand left. Her skull gleamed under the candlelight, exactly as it had the day her grandmother dragged her to that cursed bath and shoved her beneath the black water to pay the family debt.
She ran her palms over the naked dome of her head, laughter spilling out in jagged bursts while tears carved clean lines down her cheeks. Then she saw it. Burned over her heart, glowing faint red beneath the skin, were two words pulsing gently like a second heartbeat:
PRICE PAID
Her fingers trembled as she touched the brand. The warmth beneath it throbbed like something alive. Somewhere in the shadows, a voice wearing Alice's smile licked its teeth and waited for the next round.