Prologue - Too Pretty for This World

Branwen Mosswood POV

They always said I was too pretty to survive the world I was born into.

"Might get you coin, that face of yours," My ma would mutter, tying back one of my escaping dark curls while I squirmed. "But it'll get you killed twice as fast."

I suppose she wasn't wrong.

Name's Branwen Mosswood, a born witch, tavern wench, and right nuisance to anyone who thinks I ought to keep my head down.

I grew up on the outskirts of Divinora, just outside the great stone walls where the fancy folk sleep on featherbeds and pretend monsters aren't real. Couldn't be seen having beasts and witches living among 'em, gods forbid. So they pushed us all into the surrounding wilds, and there we stayed. Hiding in plain sight under mossy roofs and stone circles while pretending we're nothing more than herbalists with a flair for theatrics.

Truth is, I was born with dirt under my nails, blood in my spells, and magic in my marrow. But most days, I didn't feel like some powerful forest witch. I felt like a girl who smelled like ale and sweat and worked her arse off trying to earn my freedom.

I've got chestnut curls I can barely tame, green eyes sharp enough to cut glass, and a body that's… well… I'll be modest and say "curvy as sin and built like a wild thing." Enough to pull tips out of men without lifting my skirts. I'm tall too, near five foot nine, strong arms from hauling barrels and a backside the regulars toasted to every bloody night.

I took the job at The Pig & Whistle inside the walled city when I was sixteen. Meant to save every copper 'til I could buy my own cottage somewhere distant. Maybe a little shop selling charms and tonics. A place where no one knew my name or looked at me like I might hex their bollocks off, even if they deserved it.

In my dreams, I pictured it often, a wee stone cottage with ivy climbing the sides, smoke curling from the chimney, a rickety wooden fence where I could grow lavender and sage and sit in the sun with no one telling me to smile. No games. No fear. Just peace.

I came close, too. Had a full purse hidden beneath a loose board in the tavern's cellar and a plan drawn in my head....one more year, maybe two, and I'd be gone. Disappear into the hills and start over.

But fate, as it happens, is a thieving bastard.

The night it all went wrong started like any other. I flirted for tips. Dodged grabby hands. Poured their ale with a smile sharper than any blade. Then Lord Silas Hawke strutted in like he owned the godsdamn cobblestones. Velvet coat, smug grin, breath thick with brandy and self-importance. Told me I looked like a painting come to life. Asked me, loudly, if I fancied a "more respectable position warming a nobleman's bed."

I laughed. Told him I'd rather kiss a dead fish.

Apparently the bastard didn't like being refused. He grabbed my waist, forced me against the bar, and slid his hand beneath my skirts like I was already his property. I warned him once. Told him my pretty face didn't come with permission.

But he kept squeezing. So I did what any sensible witch with a curved dagger in her garter would do, I stabbed him through the fleshy part of his thigh. Didn't even hit bone. Honest to gods, I was merciful.

He shrieked like a dying sow and bled all over my shoes. Guards arrived before I finished wiping the blade and suddenly I was "seducing nobles with witchcraft," "tempting innocent men with feminine wickedness," and "attempted murder."

Me. Wicked. They dragged me in chains across the cobbled square while folk spat at my feet and shouted, "witch!" Guards shoved me into a damp cell carved beneath the courthouse, with walls slick with mold and rat piss. They let me stew overnight while Lord Hawke cried to the magistrate about how I bewitched him.

My Ma came sobbing at dawn but she couldn't even afford the bribe to get me a second hearing. Said my savings were confiscated as "evidence." All those years. All those bloody coppers. Gone.

I thought they'd hang me at dawn. I was ready to spit in their faces as they tightened the rope. Would've been easier. Instead, they declared me "unfit for civilized punishment" and tossed me into something worse than death, the Wilder Games.

Every summer, the city sends thirty so called criminals into the Killground, a massive forest arena deep in the shifter lands.

A sick bargain struck long ago: throw the beasts a bit of "human filth" to hunt so they won't storm the city walls and rip out throats by moonlight. Survive thirty days, you win your freedom. Get caught… you become a plaything to whatever shifter Warlord claims you, body, blood, and soul.

Or they can simply kill you for sport. Your choice.

Now here I am, Branwen bloody Mosswood, chained in the back of a filthy wagon rattling toward the Games. Dirt on my face. Rope binding my wrists. "Witch" stitched on my collar for all to see.

The guards keep whispering about me to themselves. "That one's too pretty. The beasts'll fight over her."

They look at my lashes and lips like I'm meat already being tenderized. I stare back, my jaw set, wishing I had a spell powerful enough to turn them into toads.

I won't beg. I won't cry. I won't die easy.

I swear to every god, moon, and creeping vine, I will not die for their entertainment. And I sure as hell won't be claimed by any beast who thinks I'm prey.

Not without ripping him in half first.