I crossed-my-heart-hope-to-die swore I would never disobey her rules again. And most especially that I would never, never go OUTSIDE.

She cried then, too.

A few days later she came home from the grocery store with hardly any food but she had a bunch of tools and bars and sheets of metal. She told me we didn’t have any more money and she’d sold everything we could sell, so she had to go back to work.

She was getting a dog to watch over me while she was out and she was going to build a very special cage for it. She’d even learned to use a blowtorch and hammer to do it. I thought she was terribly clever and exciting!

I knew it was going to be a very special big dog because the cage was ginormous. I knew why she had to build it inside: it was three times as wide as any of our doors! Shortly before it was done, I played inside the cage, imagining all the fun I was going to have with my new, very best friend. With a best friend it would be a lot easier to resist the lure of OUTSIDE.

I wasn’t as strong then as I am now. My strength increased as I matured, along with my other senses. But I knew the dog we were getting was going to be very, very strong because the bars on the cage were as big around as my mother’s arm and inside she bolted a thick collar and a heavy chain to the floor. She said the dog might have to be restrained sometimes when we had company.

We never had company.

I began to think I was the only one excited about the new addition to our family. While she worked on the cage, I’d dream up names for our dog and try them out on her, and her eyes would get strange and her lips would pull down.

I’ve always slept hard.

One night my mother gave me a bath, dried and brushed my hair, and we played games on the rickety kitchen table until I nearly fell asleep on my stool. Then she carried me to her bed where I lay my head on her pillowcase—the one with the little ducks—and I put my hands on her face and stared at her with sleepy eyes because I loved watching her while I fell asleep, and she held me so close and so tight, snuggled up in her good mom-smell that I knew I was the most important thing to her in the whole world, and I slipped off to happy dreams.

The next morning I woke up with a collar around my neck, chained on a small mattress inside the dog’s cage.

JADA

She stood by the edge of the mattress in the study on the silent, otherwise empty first floor of Barrons Books & Baubles, frowning down at the body draped in nearly transparent pieces of silvery cloth.

Not that Ryodan knew she was frowning or even that she was in the room. Although his body shivered with agony, the rise and fall of his chest was nominal; she’d counted his breaths, twice a minute. His pulse was nonexistent. He’d either gone into a deep meditation or someone, no doubt Barrons, had put him into a magical, healing sleep.

Unwrapping a protein bar, she knelt by the mattress, lifted the edge of one of the pieces of fabric and inhaled sharply. Raw, blistered flesh oozed pinkish liquid. She carefully released the edge and lifted another.

He’d burned himself to the bone in places, to keep her safe, while she’d tried to rescue someone she’d known full well on some level wasn’t there.

“The wound I refused to dress,” she whispered, for a moment fourteen again, chained in a dungeon with Ryodan trying to get her to face the atrocities of her life, stare them down cold, acknowledge and make some kind—any kind—of peace with them; his brand of tough love, the only thing that’d had the slightest chance of penetrating her formidable armor. She’d told herself it wasn’t concern but manipulation. Her thoughts and feelings about the man had always been at odds. She’d idolized him. Craved his attention and respect. Never trusted him. Yet what he’d done tonight…she could see nothing the mighty Ryodan might have gained from it.

She’d made her own kind of peace by freeze-framing into the future, faster than the wind, faster than any pain could follow. Seeking adventure, sensation, stimulation, because as long as she was feeling something new, she didn’t feel anything old. Past is past, she’d crowed to anyone who’d listened.

She knew Ryodan’s words by heart. She knew everything he’d said by heart. Few adults had given her useful words. Tucked into a Mega brain behind a gamine grin and insouciant swagger, they’d always been treasured.

The wound you refuse to dress is one that will never heal. You gush lifeblood and never even know why. It will make you weak at a critical moment when you need to be strong.

Tonight her unhealed wounds had cost her. And him.

She’d watched him die once, gutted by the Crimson Hag. Somehow, miraculously, he’d returned from the dead, whole and good as new. She wasn’t worried that he might die from these burns.

Regardless, looking at him in this condition made her feel sick.

She closed her eyes, reliving the abbey under attack, the bloodbath of a battle, so many dead, cut down so young, the hellish fire, the moment she’d felt her mind snap.

Shazam.

Ryodan stumbling from the inferno, carrying her and her stuffed animal, both unharmed.

Which brought her to thoughts of the completed tattoo at the base of her spine, the cellphone in her pocket, and the certainty Ryodan could find her no matter where she went.

Of course, now that she had what she’d so desperately wanted, she couldn’t justify pursuing a personal agenda.

Forgotten in her hand, the protein bar had melted and chocolate ran warm and gooey through her fingers. She devoured it in two bites, barely chewing, licked her hand, and pocketed the wrapper.