Chapter Eight #2
"We are all bound to hunger," the words come quieter now. "Made of teeth and need. Everything that walks or crawls takes from something that breathes. Your kind clothes it in prayer. Mine does not."
The wind stirs the canopy above us. Shadows shift across his face as his eyes settle on mine again.
"Tell me, huntress," the question comes almost gently. "Where does your mercy end, and mine begin?"
His head tilts, studying me as though listening for something beneath my breath.
"Each time you step beneath these trees, the air shifts."
His voice lowers, sinking into the dark between us.
"I feel you before I see you. The restlessness in your bones. The way your breath changes when the houses fall behind you."
My fingers tighten around the hilt, until the leather gives a faint creak.
"You walk faster once the trees close in. Your spine lengthens, for you seek the sky without a ceiling."
"I seek nothing from you," I answer.
Leaves shift beneath his heel.
"You are weary," he murmurs. "Of scrubbing floors until your hands split. Of carrying plates you do not taste. Of shrinking until you fit inside their hands."
My nails dig into my palm.
"Do not presume to know the depths of my heart," I reply.
He does not relent.
"You carry obedience like a shawl. You wrap it close so they do not see the fire beneath."
He stands close enough that I can make out the pale line of his throat in the dim light.
"But you are not like them. You do not belong to their narrow rooms. You press against them like a branch straining at a shutter."
The branches seem to lean to him, the night itself listening.
"You stand at your window and watch the birds," he goes on. "You follow their flight with your eyes until your neck aches. Your hands curl against the sill as though you might rise with them."
My breath catches once. I do not let it show again. He moves nearer.
"You are not meant to live folded. You want the tree. The height. The fall."
The knife trembles once in my grip. I steady it.
"They pull you back," his voice sinks to a whisper. "They press you down. They tell you how to sit. How to speak. How to breathe."
His hand lifts slightly, not touching me yet, only hovering a breath from my shoulder.
"I have watched them take and take and take."
The word falls slow, deliberate.
"And I have watched you fold yourself smaller each time. Until your ribs hold more breath than you dare let out."
My breath shortens.
"You think I do not see?" he asks quietly.
I swallow, feeling the cool of him through the air between us.
His eyes darken. "I saw you with the boy."
The tone is almost gentle.
"That foolish creature who would rather bruise what he claims to cherish than wait a handful of nights. He would have you bent and trembling in a barn so he may ease himself before the wedding fire is lit, then leave you to kneel in shame for it."
"Silence," I snap.
My grip falters for a heartbeat, heat rushing to my face. I step toward him without meaning to.
He notices. A faint curve touches his mouth.
"Unless," he says, "he felt what I felt."
He takes one last step.
The space between us thins to breath.
"Unless he knows you do not truly wish to be bound to him at all."
The wind moves through the branches overhead. I feel it at my back.
My heart pounds so loudly I can feel it in my ears.
"That you would rather burn than kneel at their altar."
Enough. I move before he can speak again. The dagger flashes between us, blade aimed for the place where his ribs meet.
He does not step away. My breath catches as the metal meets resistance, as his hand closes around it. Bare skin against silver.
The sound that leaves him is quiet, drawn through clenched teeth.
His fingers tighten anyway, smoke rising faintly where metal bites flesh releasing a bitter, almost sweet scent.
His palm has split open around the blade; the wound burns white, angry and raw.
Blood wells dark and thick, slipping between his fingers, running down over my knuckles.
"See."
His other hand comes up slowly and covers mine where I hold the hilt. The burn of the silver reddens, blistering where it touches.
"It wounds," he says quietly.
He watches my face as he presses the knife closer to his chest, guiding my hand with his, the skin there unsettlingly cold.
The point dimples the fabric over his heart.
"Here," he murmurs.
My arm locks. I cannot move it further. His grip holds the blade steady, his ruined palm wrapped tight around the silver. Pain flickers across his features and vanishes into something calmer.
I push—
Nothing. No rhythm under my blade. No thud against my fingers.
His chest does not answer.
My hand falters, breath leaving me in shock.
He stands there, offering himself, and for the first time, I see him without shadow.
He looks young—younger than the fear he carries.
Taller than me by a head, shoulders broad beneath the fall of his coat.
His face is pale, yet colour lives in it—in the fullness of his cheekbones, in the vivid brightness of his eyes.
Dark hair falls across his forehead, damp from the mist. It brushes his lashes, those casting long shadows along his cheekbones.
His features are cut clean and precise, yet softened by the curve of his mouth, a gentleness that does not belong to something that feeds on blood.
Beautiful.
The word flickers through me before I can stop it.
My fingers tighten on the hilt as Popa Vasile’s voice rises in memory.
The devil does not come with horns. He comes dressed in light.
His mouth curves, but pain tightens it. I see it in the fine strain at the corners, in the way his lashes lower and lift again. Still, he presses forward, driving the silver deeper into his own flesh until smoke curls there too.
My father’s blade. My mother’s prayers.
"Do it," he whispers.
His breath brushes my cheek. It smells of earth and rain.
"You wounded me once. Let me feel it again."
My arm trembles under the pressure, the blade sinking a fraction.
"It wasn’t me." My voice comes thin in the air between us. "It was the Lord."
A breath of laughter leaves him.
"It was you."
His hand tightens around mine. He leans closer, until I feel the cool of his chest through the cloth between us.
"You drove me through wood and storm," he continues. "You tore light from your own chest."
The forest seems to recede. There is only the knife, the heat of his grip, the space where his heart should answer mine and does not.
"We are flesh," he says quietly. "You kill the snared rabbit. You bleed the pig. I drink what keeps me walking."
His eyes hold mine, bright and unwavering.
"You know how to do this."
My breath catches and quickens. My pulse hammers in my throat.
"You have done it before," he insists. "You have closed your fingers and cut."
His voice lowers.
"You could end me now."
A tremor runs through my arm. The blade presses harder, until a dark line blooms beneath it. His jaw tightens as the smell of scorched flesh thickens the air.
"But you will not," he whispers.
The words brush my lips.
"Because you do not wish me gone."
Heat coils low and fierce. My grip falters, then tightens again.
"You want me to take you," he says.
The knife trembles between us.
My vision narrows to the face that stands before me—pale skin, dark hair, eyes burning with something that pulls at me like a current.
The silver sinks deeper, his skin splitting further. A sound catches in his throat. My heart slams against my ribs.
My strength leaves me then.
The blade lowers, slips away from his skin. The mark in his palm fades before my eyes, the split flesh sealing smooth beneath the sky. The place where the blade pressed to his chest shows no more wound, the dagger now useless between us.
My hands fall to my sides and I close my eyes, darkness pressing against my lids as though it might muffle the truth that beats against me without mercy.
My chest rises too fast. I hear him shift in front of me, the faint whisper of cloth, the quiet drag of his steps against the undergrowth.
"Open your eyes," he says.
I do not.
His silence stretches. Then his mouth finds my neck.
The touch is light; it barely grazes my skin. Still, my breath catches as if he has struck me. His lips linger at the place where my pulse runs wild. I feel the press of them there, the cool of it, pulling a tremor from me.
His mouth moves to my wrist, fingers turning my hand gently, exposing the place where the mugwort stains my skin. He inhales there, and I feel the faint drag of his breath across the tender inside of my arm.
"Mugwort," he murmurs.
The word hums against my skin.
"A careful touch."
His lips move again, tracing the place where I rubbed the leaves.
"You wrapped yourself in thorns," he rasps softly. "Tried to sour the taste."
His mouth curves faintly where it rests against me.
"But you are sweetness through and through. Nothing you press against your skin will change that."
His mouth returns to my throat. The kiss he leaves is gentle, almost shy, but my body answers before I can stop it. Another shiver climbs my spine and loosens my knees, breaking in a rush of warmth.
I hold my eyes shut harder, begging for darkness to anchor me. His fingers tighten at my wrist. His other hand settles at my waist, steady and sure.
"Open your eyes," he prompts again.
I shake my head faintly. The obscurity is safer. It lets me drift inside the places his mouth has touched.
A quiet huff escapes him, something close to a laugh.
"Then don’t," he says at last. "I do not need you to see what I'm about to do to you."
Before I can draw another breath, the world shifts and in a heartbeat, his presence vanishes from in front of me and reappears at my back with a speed that steals sound itself. My spine meets his chest as he draws me flush against him, effortlessly. The knife slips from my fingers into the leaves.
And then we sink.