Never safe for a moment, Carissa Locke learns from too young and tender
an age, that she is all alone in a cruel and hostile world, where even
those who were meant to be her protectors are her enemies. Sold, beat
down, and abandoned, a young girl struggles to survive against all odds,
struggles to find balance and peace between anger and indignation. In
search of deliverance, for forgiveness, desperate to believe she is a
person worth saving, or that there is anything of her at all that is
more than a war child. Carissa's soul searching, her introspection,
leading us back to where we found her, self-pity seeping away with the
realization that the rage and loathing she had visited upon the world,
the weapons that had saved her life would be the very ones that led her
to this precipice of self-destruction. As her best friend lay dying,
Carissa will do anything to heal the wound of the fight that has ruined
their friendship and may ultimately cost Danielle her life and Carissa
her freedom. In her grief over what she has done, Carissa implores
Danielle's forgiveness, learning that Danielle's perfect veneer has been
a lie all these years, she has soul-shattering secrets of her own.
Carissa has only just begun the inner battle against the Bully she has
become. She has realized the most dangerous enemy any of us will ever
face is ourselves.
