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“Rhys.”

He doesn’t look at me or answer as he continues toward the door, apparently intending to leave me here for another day without so much as a conversation. The thought of watching that door close again, of hearing the key turn and knowing I’ll spend another day staring at the same walls until he returns with my next meal, is suddenly more than I can bear.

I hurry after him and grab his arm. “Please! If you’re just going to lock me in here, then let me go!”

The words have barely left my mouth when I know they were the absolute wrong thing to say.

Rhys stops.

He doesn’t turn around immediately. The silence gives me too much time to realize just how badly I’ve misjudged what I said. The muscles under my hand go rigid while the silence stretches between us. I slowly loosen my fingers around his arm, but it’s already too late.

I know it the moment he finally turns his head and looks at me.

Then I find myself airborne.

One second my feet are planted on the floor. The next they aren’t. His hands are on me so quickly that I barely understand what’s happening until I land hard on the bed, the mattress soft enough to absorb most of the impact but not the jolt that runs through my spine. I try to scramble upright, but he’s already over me, his hands closing around my wrists and forcing them into the mattress. The weight of his body keeps mine exactly where he wants it.

“Let you go…” he repeats softly, though there’s nothing calm about the way he’s looking at me.

“I’ll come back!” I cry, twisting under him and trying to wrench one of my wrists free, but his grip only tightens. “I swear I’ll come back.”

“The fact that you made it up here to begin with is a marvel in itself.” His face is close enough that I can see the anger he’s trying to hold back. “You don’t know the mountain, and you don’t know the woods.”

That familiar ache builds in my throat, warning me that I’m about to cry again, but I’m so tired of crying in front of him that I fight it until my eyes burn.

“Then come with me. I just want to see my father. I need to know he’s all right, that he has food and wood and that he isn’t sick again.” I can hear myself getting louder, but weeks of asking the same thing have worn away whatever restraint I had left. “Why can’t you understand that?”

The desperation I’ve carried for weeks is changing into something hotter now, burning through enough of my fear that I stop thinking about which words are safe to say to him.

“Is it because your relationship with your father was such a nightmare? Mine—”

I never finish.

The back of his hand connects with the side of my face hard enough to snap my head sideways. For a second, everything simply stops. There’s no fear, no anger, no thought at all, only a sharp burst of pain followed by a hot sting spreading across my cheek and into my mouth.

I taste blood.

It takes another second for me to understand what happened.

He hit me.

He’s done awful, horrible things to me since I came here, things I try not to think about whenever he isn’t in the room, but he’s never hit me like that. The distinction makes all the difference. When his hand moves toward me again, my body reacts without waiting to find out what he intends to do.

I squeeze my eyes shut and turn my head sharply to the side, waiting for another blow because it’s the only defense I have.

It doesn’t come.

“You gave me your word,” he growls, his fingers closing around my wrist instead. “Which clearly doesn’t mean shit.”

My heart pounds. I can feel my pulse everywhere. I keep my face turned away because I’m suddenly afraid to look at him. If I were braver, I’d tell him that my word means nothing when it was given to the man holding me prisoner. That after he hit me, the moment another opportunity presents itself, I’ll climb onto Bramble and try again.

But I’m not brave enough.

Not anymore.

Then another thought comes, colder than the fear already crawling through me. Even if I managed to escape this castle again, even if I survived the mountain and reached my father, Rhys wouldn’t simply accept that I was gone.

He would follow me.