Page 148 of Into the Isle

I squared my shoulders. “What is this? Some kind of—”

A blurring shadow to my right cut me off, launching from an inky patch between two longhouses.

I spun toward the charging student—one of Astrid’s minions. A first-year like me, baring her teeth in a snarl.

My spear went up at the last second as she tried to smack me over the head with a cudgel.

I blocked the blow, sidestepping—

And tripped when something hard kicked the back of my calf, bringing me to my knees.

Pain shot through my side when a fist smacked against my ribs.

I let out an oof and doubled over, dropping my spear.

I tried to whip my head around to defend myself from the new attacker I hadn’t seen coming.

It only gave the girl with a cudgel more room to hit me, and she brought me to the ground with a kick to my spine.

“An ambush?” Astrid asked, finishing my sentence as her friends battered me. “Yes, whore, it is. It’s time you learned you don’t belong here, and don’t ever try to take my man from me.”

I could hardly hear her over the vicious kicks being lobbed at my torso, my head, my legs. Was she talking about Sven? The man she pined after—the same man who had been busy chasing me and Grim during the Lunar Night when she wanted him to be ravaging her? The same man I loathed just as much as I loathed her?!

Why would I ever want him?

I tried to hold back my cries, not wanting weakness to take me, but I felt so defeated, and I had for days. This was just the icing on the cake. The straw that broke the camel’s back and sent me in a spiral of despair.

Crying out to the moon, which didn’t even have the decency of showing itself tonight, I finally lost my will. I curled into a ball to try and defend myself and keep my bones from breaking. Pain and agony hit me everywhere at once, both physical and mental.

“That’s right, bog-blood,” Astrid said with a laugh, while her three goons kicked the shit out of me. “Cry for me. Cry for your mother. Show how weak you really are when you don’t have those feckless boys around to defend you.”

Once the rainfall of kicks stopped coming, I was a pummeled mess. Mewling in pain, bruised everywhere, I felt like I was internally bleeding and that at least a few ribs had broken.

“Get her up,” Astrid growled to her comrade.

One of the girls lifted me by my hair, ripping a groan from my throat as I was forced on my knees.

I wobbled in place, wanting nothing more than to embrace the ground and fall asleep forever. My head swam with dizzying pain. My eyes were half-lidded.

Astrid took the cudgel from her friend. She stepped in front of me, crouching. Then she pointed the small club at me.

“Know your place, you swampy slut,” she muttered.

She swung the cudgel, bludgeoning me across the face, and darkness swallowed me completely.

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