Page 63 of Breaking Isolde
I don’t blink. “Yeah.”
Except I don’t. I don’t know what the point of any of this is.
Why couldn’t he just find a nice girl, date her, marry her and have babies? What the fuck was the point of all these shenanigans?
He smiles. “Very well.” Abelard turns to Rhett. “Are you prepared?”
Rhett sounds bored when he answers. “I am.”
The crowd stirs, a rustle of expensive fabric and anticipation. Abelard picks up two objects from the altar—daggers, one black, one white. He hands the black one to Rhett, the white one to me.
I take it, weighing it in my palm. It’s heavier than it looks, handle carved with thorns.
Abelard nods. “As is custom, you will mark yourself. The Hunt begins with blood.”
He motions for me to go first. I hold up the blade, press it to the heel of my hand, and push. The pain is sharp, but not as bad as I expected. Blood wells up, dark and sticky, dripping onto the white dress.
Rhett does the same, only he doesn’t flinch. His blood is brighter than mine, almost orange in the torchlight.
Abelard steps forward and joins our hands over the boulder, marking the completion of the ritual. “In the name of the Founders, let the Hunt begin.”
There’s a cheer, not loud but unanimous.
I look at Rhett. His eyes never leave me, not for a second. He lets go of my hand and wipes the blood across my face.
“Make it good, Isolde. Make it hurt when you fight back, but make no mistake, I will win your heart.”
I stare back, unblinking, and in that moment I know:if I can’t kill him, I’ll at least make him bleed.
Abelard gestures to the woods. “You have a one-minute head start,” he says. “Then he comes for you.”
A man in a black robe steps down, hood pulled over his face and lifts a giant horn to his lips and blows, the sound echoing.
“Run.”
I don’t wait for another warning. I turn, hike up the skirt, and bolt into the trees.
The branches tear at my arms, the cold burning my lungs, but I run anyway. Every step is a dare.
Catch me if you can, motherfucker.
And if you do, you better finish the job.
There’s a lull in the woods, a freeze, like the whole world is waiting for someone to say “stop.” It’s only after I crash through two layers of underbrush and almost bust my ass on a patch of frozen moss that I realize I’m not sure which way to run. There’s no fucking map, no game plan, just the dark and the sound of my breath and the wet flapping of the dress around my ankles.
I lurch left, then right, trying to get my bearings, but the trees are identical, the ground sloping every direction at once. My heart is punching holes in my ribs. Each time I step down I expect to feel the burn of Rhett’s hand around my ankle, dragging me back to the ground, but he’s not here yet.
The memory of his eyes at the altar won’t let me go. That whole ritual, all of it, was for him.
The ceremony is still fresh—my hand stinging, the warmth of my own blood sticky on my palm, the way Abelard’s voice hovered just above my head as if he was narrating my eulogy instead of a rite. The bastard’s Latin was textbook, but I caught the meaning, even though I wasn’t really listening. Sacrifice, submission, rebirth. A checklist for breaking girls.
Don’t make it easy. But I will win your heart in the end.
The donors, the Board, all of them eating it up like this was just another line in the family history book. My humiliation, my blood, my rage—proof of the tradition’s power.
Now I’m running for my life, hand throbbing, dress stained, with nothing but that memory to keep me company. The lanterns marking the edge of the woods are far behind me now. There’s only moonlight, filtered through bare branches, making every shadow into a trap.
It hits me then, what Casey must have felt the night she died. How the fear doesn’t come from the footsteps behind, but from the silence in front of you—the certainty that if you stop, you’ll be devoured by the dark. I want to believe I’m better than her, that I can outlast the monster at my back. But every step is slower than the last, the dress heavier, the branches grabbing for me like hands.
