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PROLOGUE

Pray to the devil

Devour flesh

Kill for survival

For thrills, too, if that’s what you’re into

Where I co blue

My world—the Badlands—is made up of dark fantasies and endless terrors You must pick a brand of evil and dedicate your life to it if you want to survive

Holding out hope that things will change is foolish They won’t No one is going to be arriving as a savior Heroes don’t exist here, but there are plenty of villains to choose from

You can befriend a clan of cannibals Work the farms that skin people alive Join so to thrive It doesn’t iance Very few can make it on their own

I’d heard what things had been like before power shifted, before the depraved and corrupted paved the future for a neay of living I won’t bore you with the logistics; you’ll get to witness that firsthand

As for me and where I fit in?

I was born a Savage and taken by another The whole situation is complicated and chaotic, just like we are

Like our story is

Sahtmare

Crazier than crazy

Sicker than sick

The only man I’ll ever love

And my best friend

He’s reatest enemy

I’m his peace and his torment

Ours isn’t a tale of benevolent, tender romance It’s bloody and ruthless It’s pain and sorrow, at ti It isn’t poetic or butterfly-inducing, but it is a love story A love story about a girl and a boy, forever tied together in a beautiful purgatory of exquisite carnage

PART ONE

“There is no greater love than the love the wolf feels for the lamb-it-doesn’t-eat”

Hélène Cixou

CHAPTER ONE

Four years prior