Chapter One: A Field of Wildflowers

Prologue

After the third nail tore free from my fingers, I repeated my mantra: Climbing from the window is better than being thrown from it.

Weak winter sunlight flared, making distinguishing the next stone in the wall from nothing at all impossible. Being left in the dark for years made me forget how bright the damn sun was.

The acidic burn from my swallowed bile helped warm my chest against the frigid wind cutting along my naked body. Fingers gripping the menial lip of stone, I reached my toes down, blindly searching for purchase. It was harder to hold onto the side of the tower the lower I got. The rocks that made up the gray and white building smoothed out the closer I got to the ground. 

Freedom, I promised myself. It was below me. I simply had to hold on.

My toes slipped along the next step, kicking my leg out with the momentum, sending it out into the wind. I held my breath. Was this the moment I fell?

No. 

I had too many fae to kill to die while escaping a prison.

A prison my lover had sent me to.

Pulling my leg back from the gale-winds, I clung to the stone tower, gulping down dry heaps of ice-flavored air. Surviving was my only option.

Above me, heavy grunting sounded, making my stomach churn. What I had done to secure my freedom was horrible enough to warrant my deserving to be in prison. The grunting stopped. I needed to climb faster.

Down and down I scrambled. I was far enough from the window to make grabbing me impossible, but if someone were to look down… being one of his birds wouldn’t be the worst outcome for me if I were caught.

Humans didn’t get out of Iron River Prison alive. 

Few had escaped over the years and lived, and I intended to be one of them. 

My foot slipped along smooth plaster. The end. Digging my nail-less fingers deeper into the mortar between stones, I dared a glance between my shoulder and the wall. I blinked away the dregs of the near-white sunlight and focused on my bloody feet.

I was told that the base of the tower was smooth plaster, taller than two fae males. It was meant to deter break-ins. What fucking idiot would break into a fae prison was beyond me, but the rumor was true. 

If I were lucky, I might break my ankle when I landed on the ground. If I were extra lucky, I would avoid any of the bone shards, rocks, or relatively fresh corpses littering the ground.

“Where is she? Bring that little human cunt here this instant.” 

Like an idiot, my head shot up toward the window I had so carefully climbed out of. It was miserable timing since an object was hurled from the window. Not an object. The woman I had left dressed in the antique lace lingerie that had been on my body before I put her in it. Her milky skin and long, drab brown hair—everything that she and I had in common—soared past me, hitting the ground with a sickening thud. Bones snapped, piercing organs; I knew this because the stench of her freshly deceased body wafted up on the vicious early winter wind.

My eyes, still trained on the window frame above, met the beady eyes of my nightmare. A male who had made my seven years in prison something that would leave the deepest scars on my soul. The sort of scars that no one could see, but everyone who met me would feel. I radiated the darkness and torment that the Warden of the worst mixed-species prison in all the realm had instilled in me. 

Warden smiled down at me, his fangs peeking over thin lips, promising punishment. “Guards, detain the escapee,” he said, his voice colder than the air around me. 

Bastard propped his chin in his palm and watched with a smile as I contemplated my choices: Jump and attempt my escape, or cling naked to the wall and wait for the guards to snatch me and bring me to him.

The river was a fair distance from the tower. A rushing, foaming, raging snake of near-freezing water. The probability of drowning or freezing to death was high. If the guards brought me back to Warden, I would be raped, and my fate would be the same as every woman whose bones now littered the field below me. Tossed from the window and scattered as food for the crows and vermin. 

I’d rather go out on my own terms.

Bellowing my rage and a promise of revenge, I held the Warden’s vapid eyes and jumped. I was lucky; my ankles didn’t snap, but a shard of sun-bleached bone pierced the bottom of my foot. The body of the poor woman I’d left in my place lay close enough to me that the ends of her long hair brushed over my bare skin when the wind blew. 

The massive gates to the prison opened, releasing a comforting stench. I was unaccustomed to the mellow scents of fresh air. The metal clatter of guard-armor spurred me forward. With a shard in my foot, I ran toward the river. Warden shouted, screaming with rage. My skin tingled with the sting of pins and needles as I ran. The damp air the rapids churned up was somehow colder than the winds at the top of the tower. 

Guards shouted, a few throwing stones at me. They didn’t want to kill me. They were likely ordered not to. I was Warden’s bird; he was the only one who got to have the pleasure of breaking me. A rock glanced off my shoulder, sending me stumbling forward, landing hard on my knees. 

The frothing sound of freedom was within reach. I threw my head up. I could see the bank. Ignoring the scream in my knees, I pushed to my feet and pursued my race to freedom. 

“Stop!”

Had yelling at a prisoner to stop escaping ever worked? 

The shard in my foot sank deeper into my arch. I would endure. 

For seven years, my parents had to live with my public disgrace.

For seven years, the male I had loved enjoyed life, while I was beaten, humiliated, and starved.

For seven fucking years, I had been plotting my vengeance, and a piece of dead woman’s bone wasn’t going to defeat me. 

“Stop!”

Soft leather skimmed my shoulder. I twisted, recalling a little of my defensive training before being thrown into prison, surprising the fae guard. Lurching to the left, I bent my knees and shoved up with all my meager muscle, launching myself up and back.

I gave the motherfucking Warden leering at me from the tower window the finger, smiling as I plunged into bitterly cold water, earning my freedom. 

The rapids tore me away from the prison. I fought to keep my head above the frothing waves, looking back to ensure I hadn’t been pursued. At the vast expanse of dying grass and plants, I smiled against chattering teeth. 

I had escaped Iron River Prison.

A high-pitched whistle caught my ear. My frozen limbs were stiff as I worked to turn myself in the direction of a smiling face with a deep scar across his cheek. The rope had to be thrown three times before I managed to catch it and hold it long enough for my old cell-mate to pull me to shore.

“You fucking did it.” Jordan threw a wool blanket around my wet, naked form, hugging me into his warmth.

My teeth refused to stop chattering, but I managed to form a full sentence between each clack of teeth. “How long have you been here?”

“Three days. I have a fire and soup, but we need to walk a bit.” Jordan gestured to a faint glow away from the river’s edge. “Won’t lie, I was getting worried.”

He pulled my shoulders, urging me to walk forward. I cried out against the bite of the bone still stuck in my foot. We stopped, Jordan’s soft eyes searched my face. I pointed to my foot. 

Three years ago, the fae guards in my block got bored and decided to throw a large man into my cell while I had my ration. I was wearing whatever was left of the clothes I had been wearing when I had first arrived, but it wasn’t my body I guarded. It was my food. We were fed once a day, twice if we were on the Warden’s favorite list. 

Jordan was massive. Almost as large as a fae male. The guards had laughed and snickered, placing bets on whether he would beat me for my food or rape me first. I had shuffled deeper into my cold cell, the pebbles and dust grinding into sand under my backside. 

Jordan had raised his hands, placing them on the frail buttons holding together the tattered mess that was his shirt. Slowly, he unfastened the top few, pulling his shirt to reveal the left side of his chest. My relief had been monumental at that moment. A woman’s name was scrawled over Jordan’s heart, a mark no tattoo artist could make; a crux mark. Jordan had found his soulmate, and it was his silent way of assuring me he wouldn’t violate me. I held up the bowl of food, a peace offering. He had dipped two dirt-encrusted fingers into the gruel and ate. The guards had bemoaned their ruined entertainment, but after three years together, I was grateful for it. Those guards had given me a brother-in-chains. 

A brother who knew without my saying anything that my foot was injured.

“Making my life hard again?” Jordan chuckled, supporting my side as we hobbled toward his camp.

After eating and warming enough to stop my teeth from chattering, I held the bottom of my foot up for him to see. “Want to yank it out?”

Jordan wrinkled his nose. “I hate feet.” Sighing, he reached into his bag, pulling pliers, a tin of something, and gauze out. 

I swallowed my yelp of pain when the shard came free. Jordan smothered the gash in cream and then wrapped it. 

“How far are we from your home?” I asked, dressing in the clothes he had brought me. I wasn’t sure who they had belonged to, but they were smaller than me.

“Two days. You floated a while. Want to tell me about it?” He poked the fire, holding my eyes.

“Not really.” The escape had been Jordan’s plan. Three months ago, he had found a way to escape through the tunnels he worked in. It was dangerous, but better to die escaping than to waste away. The only problem was me. He wouldn’t abandon me, and I no longer worked in the tunnels. 

Jordan schemed for weeks before coming up with his plan for me to succumb to Warden’s whims and escape through the only open window in all of Iron River Prison: the Warden’s bedroom window.

What Jordan didn’t know was what I had to do to make his plan a reality. Nor did I want him or anyone to ever know.

“What do you want to tell me about?” he asked.

I clutched the wool blanket tighter to me. Seven years had been stolen from me. I was seventeen when I woke up on the floor of a dirty cell in a pretty dress. What did I want to tell him about…

“I want to start a rebellion and kill the motherfuckers who stole our lives.”