The valley had grown lush, the greenery thickening into a suffocating embrace that seemed to pull the farmhouse deeper into the earth. The road to town had long since been reclaimed by weeds and wild grass, a dusty vein that David no longer bothered to clear. He didn't need the world, and he had ensured that Sarah had forgotten it ever existed.

Inside the house, the air was heavy with the scent of beeswax, old wood, and the metallic tang of sweat. Sarah stood by the window, her hand resting atop the heavy, rounded swell of her stomach. She was seven months pregnant, her body transformed into a vessel for David’s legacy. Her breasts had grown heavy and aching, the nipples dark and sensitive, straining against the thin silk of a nightgown that David insisted she wear—and nothing else.