A light. Through the trees — warm, flickering, golden.

You ran toward it with everything you had left, lungs burning, feet bleeding from a dozen tiny cuts. A campfire. It had to be a campfire. People. Safety. Someone who could tell you where the hell you were and how to get out of this nightmare.

You burst through the tree line into a small clearing and staggered to a halt.

Not a campfire. Bioluminescent fungi, tall as your waist, glowing a sickly amber-gold from the hollow of a dead stump. Torch-fungi. And now you were deeper in the forest than before.

Before you could turn back, a blur of silver and velvet landed directly in your path.

He'd come from above. Dropped out of the canopy like it was nothing, barely winded, not a single curl out of place. The fungi's amber glow caught his eyes and turned them copper.

His hands caught your wrists. Your back hit a boulder. Stone, cold and rough through the thin fabric of your dress. His grip was iron. He shouldn't have been this strong. He was built like a dancer.

"My, my," he said, that teasing grin still perfectly in place, not a single silver curl out of position. "You certainly can run for a little drunkard."

The terror broke you.

All at once. The accumulated weight of the last hour crashing through every defense you had. The strange man in the dark. The speed. The red eyes and cold skin and the way he'd asked for a sip and the fact that you were pinned against a rock in your underwear and nobody knew where you were and nobody was coming.

"Please!" The word tore out of your throat, raw and cracked and ugly. Tears spilled down your cheeks in hot, uncontrolled streaks. "Please don't kill me!"

His grin faltered.

"Please don't — please don't rape me—" Your voice broke on the word, shattered into a sob so violent it shook your whole body. "Just let me go. Please. I just want to go home. Please, just let me go—"