(Continued from The Devil You Don’t Know: Chapter 1 of the Devil series)

Tabitha knows she’s dreaming.

She -- or whoever she is in this dreamscape -- runs through a thick forest. Branches lash out, biting at her arms, while spiky twigs and burrs pierce the soles of her bare feet.

Tabby knows this is her body, but also knows it isn’t her body. She pauses in her haste, using a nearby tree to support herself. The stitch in her side is unforgiving, but she has to push through it.

Glancing at the hand pressed against the rough tree bark, Tabby knows she’s seen it before, but it isn’t her hand now, the one in the waking world. Dream Tabby pays no heed to this revelation, and propels herself on, forcing her legs to pick up speed, nearly tripping as the material of her night shift tangles around her legs.

Ahead, just visible through the light of the full moon above, the trees begin to thin, and before her a clearing appears. She loses her footing and falls forward. She tries to get her legs back under her, to keep from falling, but she goes down, and the moment her body hits solid, cool earth, she stays down.

The tears come, pouring forth with every emotion she had not allowed herself to feel over the past few months. She cries and cries, wetting the grass and dirt beneath her.

“Surrender” was not a word in her vocabulary, but her family has just about beat it into her. Not with physical blows, no, with subjugation and duty and honor… not to mention guilt. She must marry, like any good girl her age, marry the son of a neighboring lord, so that her family legacy would be secure.

Her groom is a frightful creature, brutal and wicked and bloodthirsty. She sees her future as clearly as if it lay before her as a painting, forever swollen with the man’s child, shackled to the castle as though a slave. Her father knows, as does her mother, the horrid rumors of her husband-to-be. The ways he has treated women he has bedded in the past. They know, and yet they persist. They persist in this endeavor to sell her off like chattel. No better than the horses in their stables or the sheep in their pastures.

Please. Please someone help me. I’ll do anything to escape this fate.

As though on cue, a single thunder clap cracks overhead, startling her. The sky has been clear, devoid of clouds all day. Where did this storm come from? The unseasonably balmy night keeps her warm despite the thinness of her shift, though an icy finger slides down her spine. The air in the clearing suddenly feels dense, heavy upon her back, and an acrid smell reaches her nostrils.

She forces herself to roll over, and screams when she is met with the face of a man peering down at her.

Scrambling away as fast as...

Full of the Devil, Chapter 2