Anathema (The Eating Woods, #1)

by Keri Lake

I was no more than a few days old when I’d been found abandoned before that cursed arch in a wicker basket, a single black rose upon my chest. No one knew who’d left me there, but every villager speculated that, whoever they were, they must have hoped the woods would eat me, as well. Fortunately, someone had found me before then, and placed me on the doorstep of the Bronwick family. Otherwise, I’d have probably ended up like so many others who’d fallen victim to the forest’s voracious appetite. So many souls. Hundreds, maybe.

Emotions I was forced to keep hidden for fear of looking possessed by evil, as girls were often perceived when they felt too much.

The emotions remained strangled in my throat, like the many times I’d been forced to swallow them back in the face of ridicule and scorn and rejection. I’d learned at too early an age that the sound of a girl’s scream drew nothing more than apathy.

What a terrible burden to watch something die.