Barons of Decay

Arianette wakes in a hospital bed after being dead for three minutes.

Arianette wakes in a hospital bed after being dead for three minutes. Pulled from a river with rope-burned wrists and lungs full of silt, she remembers almost nothing—only a beast in a mask, hands that felt inhuman, and a voice calling her chosen. An FBI agent presses for details she cannot or will not give. Her body carries evidence her mind has buried: bruises blooming under brown skin, a scar behind her ear where a tracking device was ripped out, the raw geography of a girl who ran through a forest and nearly did not survive. She gives them nothing. If she speaks, she will remember. If she remembers, the beast returns.

Three strangers bleed for a masked King they've never seen

Damon Kemp—an ex-convict recruited from prison on a mysterious scholarship—kneels beside Hunter Sorrin, a quiet engineering student who hosts late-night radio, and Armand Stein, an arrogant East End legacy. In a torchlit forest clearing ringed by faceless Shadows, the Baron King slices his scarred palm and bleeds into a chalice carved from bone. Each man repeats the oath and cuts his own flesh, their blood mixing in the ancient vessel. The King paints pentagrams on their foreheads and distributes weapons: Armand receives the bone-handled knife, Damon his compound bow, and Hunter nothing—the King taps his own temple and calls Hunter's mind the sharpest blade. Then the King orders the girl brought forward. Arianette steps into the firelight, and the hunt begins.

Twelve chimes release Arianette barefoot into pitch-black forest

She bolts at the first toll of the clock tower, branches slicing her skin, roots catching her feet. An arrow thuds into a tree inches above her head. She crawls into a thicket and draws herself small, using a visualization of periwinkle flowers to steady her heart. Through the darkness she hears one Baron's taunting voice promising to find her. The minutes bleed past while she fights a cramp seizing her calf, dissociating until silence returns. Regina, the outgoing Baroness who prepared her for this night, had warned her to stay hidden as long as possible—the longer the Barons search, the less time they have to claim her. She dares to stretch, and a hand clamps around her ankle.

Arianette slits Armand's throat and binds herself to shared lies Armand pins her to the forest floor and tells her she was never meant to survive the forest, that she possesses dangerous knowledge. He tears off her underwear and positions himself to rape her—violating the King's single command that her virginity be preserved. A figure crashes through the brush, distracting him. Arianette seizes the bone-handled knife from the…