Chapter 11: The Price of Freedom

The world dissolved into a vortex of tearing branches and crushing impacts. Emilia tucked her body into a tight ball, arms wrapped around her head as she plummeted down the rocky slope. Stones ripped at her clothes and skin, the violent tumbles sending jarring shocks through her entire frame. She tasted blood where her teeth had cut into her cheek. This was not an escape. It was a controlled fall into oblivion. Just as her consciousness began to flicker, her body slammed into something thick and unyielding—a dense cluster of mountain laurel growing stubbornly from a ledge partway down the ravine. The impact drove the air from her lungs, but the tangled branches snagged and held, arresting her deadly descent. For a long moment, she simply hung there, suspended in the thorny embrace, gasping ragged breaths into her burning lungs. Every inch of her body screamed in protest. She could feel the warm trickle of blood from a dozen cuts and the deep, thro