Chapter 2

Alexandria POV:

My hoarse question rang out in the quiet night, and the guard standing over me shuddered violently. He stumbled backward in panic, his heels catching on the uneven dirt.

"A ghost! The corpse came back to life!" the guard shrieked, his voice cracking in terror as he pointed at my pale face sticking out of the mud.

Up on the edge of the pit, Beatrice froze. I heard the rustle of her heavy silk skirts as she leaned over the rim to glare down at me.

"What are you panicking about?" Beatrice snarled. "This little bitch just got lucky! Finish the job and keep burying her!"

Listening to her frantic order, I curled my lips into a cold smile. Behind my back, I twisted my wrists hard, snapping the remaining frayed strands of the hemp rope one by one.

The guard in the pit gritted his teeth. Gathering his courage, he raised his iron shovel high and swung the flat metal blade straight down at my head. The wind from the swing brushed against my forehead.

My ears twitched, locking onto the exact trajectory of the falling shovel. I tightened my core and twisted my upper body sharply to the left like a striking snake.

The heavy iron blade grazed my shoulder and slammed into the mud. The violent impact numbed the guard's hands, and he gasped in disbelief.

Before he could pull the shovel free, I contracted my legs under the soil and pushed off the stone walls of the pit with all my strength. With a muffled roar of flying dirt, I launched myself upward out of the grave. Mud clods sprayed in every direction.

In midair, I yanked my arms apart. With a dull snap, the ruined hemp rope broke completely and fell to the ground.

I landed steadily on the clear side of the pit floor. Though my eyes remained shut, the murderous aura radiating from my body made the air in the pit turn freezing cold. The guard swallowed hard, his boots scraping backward as his hands trembled on the shovel handle.

"Why are you standing there?" Beatrice screamed from above. "She's blind! She is a wolfless cripple without an inner wolf! Can't two grown men hold down a piece of trash?"

Reminded that a wolfless girl had no supernatural strength or healing, the two guards exchanged a fierce breath and lunged at me from both sides, trying to pin me back into the dirt with brute force.

I stood still. My ears tracked their heavy footsteps and rough breathing, mapping out their attack angles in my mind.

The guard on the left reached for my shoulder first. I ducked slightly and drove the edge of my right palm upward like a blade, striking the weak joint of his wrist. A crisp crack echoed in the pit. The guard let out a bloodcurdling scream, clutching his broken wrist as he stumbled backward.

Alarmed, the guard on the right swung his fist at my face. The punch carried the brute force of a trained warrior. I tilted my head to dodge his clumsy swing, clamped my left hand over his forearm, and used his own forward momentum to flip him over my shoulder. His back slammed hard against the stone wall of the pit. Without a sound, he slid down into the mud, out cold.

I turned around slowly. Though I couldn't see, I heard Beatrice's breathing above me turn ragged and panicked.

"You... you aren't Alexandria! Who the hell are you?" Beatrice's voice shook.

I didn't answer. Bending down, I picked up the mud-stained shovel from the ground. My fingers brushed over the rough wooden handle, welcoming the familiar feel of a weapon.

I took a deep breath, bent my knees, and leaped upward toward the edge of the pit ten feet above. Because this starved body was still too weak, my fingertips barely caught the rim of the hole. Sharp gravel tore into the pads of my fingers.

Beatrice gasped and raised her heeled shoe, stomping down viciously toward my fingers gripping the edge.

I snorted coldly and let go with my left hand. As my body dropped an inch, my right hand swung the shovel and drove the iron blade deep into the dirt wall of the pit. Using the shovel handle as a lever, I tightened my waist, swung my legs up in a sharp arc, and flipped myself right over the edge.

I landed squarely in front of Beatrice. The cold night wind whipped my muddy hair forward. Terrified, Beatrice scrambled backward, lost her footing, and fell hard onto her backside in the mud.

I drove the iron shovel into the ground beside my foot and leaned on it, turning my sightless, ice-blue eyes straight toward her face.