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I’VE NEVER FIT IN. Never belonged. I was the girl who existed on the fringes of society. The girl ignored. The girl forgotten. Vahilda was right. I am an outsider. I don’t belong in Parnissi. I wasn’t born here in this beautiful land that I once believed was a hellish dimension of fire and brimstone. I was born to Stacey Allium in a bed of thorns. Born to a woman who never uttered those words I longed to hear...
I love you.
Life is strange, though, because over a thousand townsfolk in Parnissi are singing their praises to me. Singing, shouting, affirming their love for the girl who saved their home. But they don’t even know me. They don’t know one thing about me other than the fact that I won the Flower Trials, and that I slayed Vahilda Marguerite like an animal in the street.
I did not kill the wicked witch intending to become a hero. I did it to free myself of our bond. Now that I’m free, though, all I want to do is find a place to call home.
“Don’t leave.”
“Stay with us.”
“Your home is here.”
The townsfolk of this land plead with me to remain, to live out the rest of my days in a place that doesn’t feel like home.
“You can’t go back,” a townsperson says, “not without the help of a witch or wizard.”
“But she’ll be bound again in an oath,” another says.
“If she were born here, she’d be able to travel as she pleased from Parnissi to the human world.”
“The only way out is through the thorns. But no one has ever made it out alive. It’s certain death, that’s for sure.”
Their words mean nothing to me. I’ve already made up my mind. My time here in Parnissi has come to an end, and I must adhere to that knowledge. The witches and wizards aren’t too pleased with me, their faces screwed into unhappy frowns as I dash past them, toward the sea of thorns, toward freedom.
Their love for me fades into jeers, hisses, name-calling; some even throw rocks at me. Love is curiously fragile, fickle, and will turn on you the moment you decided on something better. All I ever wanted was to be free. To run far, far away from all that ails me, from all that restricts me from being me. But I’ve got to find me first. And now, I’ll have the free will to do just that. To get there, though, I must escape. I must be free. I must run!
Run!
Run!
RUN!