There's a letter inside. On parchment. The ink is a dull brown that looks like dried blood, but is perfectly readable. 

Liath of the Lines of Lust and Wrath: 

A sacrifice has been prepared for you in the woods beyond. 

It is your privilege to accept or to reject that sacrifice. 

If you do not accept this sacrifice, she will go to another much like yourself, save perhaps even more skilled in inflicting torment. You prevent no harm by refusing. 

If you accept, you will be bound by a compact; such that, while you are within the inner woods, they will respond to your call, and aid you. However, for anything that is given, there is also a price. That price may or may not be exacted from you. 

Eat a blackberry to seal our agreement, or else eat a strawberry, and be gone from this place.

Your Obedient Slave, 

Madeline Selveria

There is a rose seal at the end; and merely by looking at it, she knows that all this is true and endorsed by the Bowers, that it will be safe for everyone involved, and that she is truly free to choose. 

She takes a slow breath. Her pulse rushes in her ears. 

... Well, then, if that's how the Bowers wants to play it. She'll accept the price, whatever it is. 

She knows this is foolish, but she has to try anyway. 

She picks up a blackberry, puts it into her mouth, and bites down.

It bursts in her mouth.

It tastes like blood should taste. Deep, rich umami sweetness, with just enough of an edge of copper to feel real.

The juices spill down her chin, stain her sweater. There's a burning sensation all across her body, a flare of pain and then rightness, warmth, an eager thrum of power - 

The heat concentrates on her right wrist, and burns an imprint of a blackberry with a bolt of pain and a sickening sizzle. She's been marked, forever and ever. 

It fades from her skin in a few moments, like it was never there. But she knows. It's just lying beneath the surface. 

The contract is sealed.

Liath grabs her wrist with a hiss of pain, and drops the letter - but it's not an unfamiliar hurt. Her lips feel like this. 

There's something right about it. Being claimed. The Bowers is making no bones about their relationship. 

She's in its power now. 

Blood wells up from where the letter touches the table, and the tree splits with a crack of protest, like it's been struck by lightning. In the gap where the bark has split, a black dagger inscribed with a rosethorn pattern lies. A ruby gleams in its pommel, as red as blood. 

Liath grabs the dagger from the tree, her hand firm on the leather-wrapped handle. 

It sticks for a moment, but she wrenches it free, and more blood upwells from where it rested. The coppery tang is rich and deep in the air.

As Liath pulls free the dagger, the burning power redoubles, slamming through her. 

Her clothes burn away in a flare of red light, her purse going with them. Only the smell of scorched leather and cotton remains. 

Liath stands completely naked in the forest with the dagger in her hand, and for a moment the fear swells. She's lost in the middle of the darkened woods without even her purse or anything to wear - 

The power in her coils, and says: That way. It feels bloody and vicious. Sadistic glee sparks off it in her mind, embers of anger and strength wicking off it.

The dagger pulls her hand out, towards the way the power calls, and the brand on her wrist twinges.

- If she wasn't going to do this, she would have left already. 

She takes a slow breath, and walks in the direction the dagger calls her. 

Her wings trail out behind her, her serrated tail flicking from side to side uneasily. 

As she walks, the power seems to dig deeper into her. She finds herself feeling... something. Something in the wood. Something in the earth. Something beyond her. Something more than her. 

The black forest lives, and she is stained with its blood and carries its weapon and its brand. She is its instrument. 

She can feel... a heartbeat and a slow breath, distant from her, out among the trees. 

Prey.

Her stride slows, smoothens. The brambles part for her, leaving her skin untouched as she stalks through the underbrush. 

Something in her sings at this. There is something out there. Someone out there. 

And they are in her hunting grounds. 

She stumbles over the thought, for a moment. The power coiling in her makes it so easy to believe it - but still.

Is she really going to do it?

The blade in her hand pulses calm, and rosethorns shift through the leather handle and bite into her palm. 

This is safe, it says. You are free to choose, it says. This is endorsed by the Bowers, it says. 

It steadies her. 

She's already chosen to believe. 

If the Bowers lie - if they choose to make her harm an innocent - then that's on the Bowers and not on her. 

She breaks out into a run. 

There is a path through the dark woods, barely more than a deer track. 

A woman is stumbling along it in a floor-length dress, one hand carrying a pair of heels, one hand pulling up her skirt so that it doesn't catch on low branches and brambles.

In the far distance, Liath can sense the end of her hunting grounds, where the trees close in even further and the luminescent moss ends. It is a dark and cruel place where this woman is going. Darker and crueler than her.

She has time. She can pause. But not forever, not unless she wishes for her sacrifice to escape her.

Liath comes up to the side of a tree, perfectly camouflaged by the woods she is a part of, and watches. 

She can sense her sacrifice's heartbeat, the dove-like pitter patter of uncertainty. 

The woman has long ears, and curving horns. Her silver hair is tied back in a long braid. She wears a diamond pendant around her throat. 

Her dress is patterned with pink begonias, and the heels clutched in her hand are pink. There are scratches on her arms and face, no doubt made by the brambles and rocks of the forest path. 

She's walking as quickly as she can through the dark forest, though her dress and bare feet hobble her. 

... She's also exactly Liath's type. She bears more than a passing resemblance to the girl she crushed on in high school, only the girl she crushed on in high school didn't have horns and would never wear a dress like that. 

Liath turns the dagger over in her hand, and follows, stalking on through the shadows. 

She's silent and invisible in the embrace of the forest. 

There are so many ways this could go. Liath could chase her out into a clearing and bear her to the ground. Liath could have the forest ensnare and bind her. She could step out onto the path and pretend to be friendly until she had her hands on her. She could lay a trap for her further down the path and ambush her from hiding. 

Images play through her mind, and she knows they don't come from the forest, but from herself. 

The stranger bound and spread-eagled on a black stone altar, helpless to resist as Liath tears at her with her claws. 

The stranger forced to the ground and impaled with her serrated tail, gasping out a breathless whine as blood spills from her cunt. 

The stranger caught in the air as Liath trails her fingers along her breasts, pinching ever so lightly. 

The stranger pinned down and cut again and again with the ritual dagger, until her screams give out and Liath is satisfied...

Yes, says the dagger in her hand. Anything you want.

She thinks about it. 

She wants to be able to take her time, but there's something about bearing the stranger to the ground herself that's satisfyingly visceral. 

A chase, then. Ending at an altar. 

The forest gives her a direction to chase her prey. Off the path. Through the trees. There is an old black stone altar deep in that copse of brambles. 

If she makes her sacrifice run, the forest will herd her in.

... She doesn't want this to be the least bit fair. 

She stalks onwards, through the trees, working to get ahead of her prey.

Something snaps in the bushes on the other side of the path, and the sacrifice stares off into the darkness for a moment. 

Liath has time to position herself.