He froze. The hammer in his hand—the same hammer he used to chip away at new blocks of stone in his studio—dropped to the floor with a loud, heavy thud. He looked at me with genuine terror in his eyes. He loved the goddess-given flesh, but he was absolutely terrified of the mind that lived inside it. "What did you say?" he hissed.

I walked out of the heavy wooden doors of his estate and stepped onto the dirt path. For the first time in my life, the ground beneath my feet felt real. The air smelled of salt and wild herbs.

He reached out to grab my wrist, his grip hard and unforgiving like the stone I used to be. "I made you!" he shouted, his face turning a deep, angry red. "You belong to me!"