Chapter Twelve #2
Since nightfall, without fail, old Mircea has opened it once each hour to step outside and relieve himself, muttering apologies to no one in particular. The hinges protest each time with the same soft, tired creak. I wait for it now, counting my own breath in the dark.
The barn breathes in its sleep. A child shifts. One of the old women coughs softly into her sleeve. The candle nearest the door gutters and goes out.
Right on cue, it comes—the low, careful creak of wood shifting against wood. A thin blade of night slips in as the door opens just enough to admit a man’s bent shape. The cold air follows him, brushing across the straw.
I rise slowly, lifting the blanket from my shoulders and fold it once, placing it neatly where I had lain.
I wait a heartbeat, then another, listening for any shift, any intake of breath that might betray a watching eye.
But the barn lies slack with exhaustion, bodies folded into themselves.
The old women remain bowed over their beads, lips moving soundlessly, eyes closed in fierce concentration.
My bare feet make no sound against the packed earth.
I move between sleeping forms, skirts gathered slightly so they do not brush against cloth or skin.
My shawl hangs loose around my shoulders. My hands feel strangely light.
Near the door, I pause.
Mama’s form is barely visible now, curled slightly on her side. Elena’s shoulder presses close to hers. Their breaths rise and fall in fragile unison.
I let my gaze travel once across the rows of sleeping villagers—the hands that fed me, the ones who taught me to knead dough, the feet who once chased me through the fields.
I do not linger long enough for the ache to rise. I turn back and slip through the opening.
Mircea stands outside with his back to the door, shoulders hunched, muttering under his breath. He does not hear me as I slip through the opening, keeping to the shadow of the wall. The mist swallows my shape as I walk swiftly along the side of the barn until its corner blocks me from view.
The mist has thinned, leaving the village washed in pale moonlight.
I pass the square where we used to play, where Radu chased us in clumsy circles and Elena laughed until she fell. The stones glimmer faintly, indifferent to memory. I do not slow.
I pass the well, its rope coiled neatly as always, bucket resting against stone. I remember leaning over its stone rim with Elena, whispering secrets into the dark below, daring the echo to answer. Tonight it stands silent, black and depthless.
My house waits beyond, low and familiar, its roof sloping against the sky. The window of the loft is dark. I know exactly where the ladder rests inside, where the wooden box lies hidden beneath my bed. For a moment, my steps falter.
Then they steady again.
The church looms ahead, its doors sealed, the wood stained darker where morning’s horror marked it. Even in the moonlight, I see the faint outline where the body had hung, a shiver tracing my spine as I pass.
The village thins behind me, houses giving way to fields silvered under the moon. The wind moves softly through the grass, whispering against my skirts. I do not feel the stones that cut my soles. I do not feel the dampness seeping into my skin. The cold is distant, irrelevant.
The forest rises ahead, a dark wall of blackened stems and waiting shadow. Whatever awaits within it, I have already chosen.
Branches shift, leaves whisper, and the dark receives me as though it had been expecting my return. The moon hangs low and pale above the treetops, its light caught in the iron jaws of the wolf traps at the edge. They gleam faintly in the grass, teeth bared like a row of patient smiles.
I step between them without slowing. The metal does not snap. The earth does not give way.
My hair hangs loose down my back, unbound, unhidden. I wear no rosary at my throat, no blade at my thigh. My hands are empty. My pockets bare. I have brought nothing with which to bargain.
Only myself.
The night air clings to my skin, cool and damp. Each breath I draw tastes of moss and old bark and something deeper beneath it, something metallic and waiting. My heart beats hard against my ribs, but it does not falter.
I know the path without looking for it, without searching. My body remembers.
Roots rise and fall beneath my steps. Branches brush my shoulders as if in recognition. The forest guides me until the clearing opens, a wide spill of silver light pooling in the grass. My breath grows taut as I step into it, my skin damp with the fine sheen of night.
There, in the seam where shadow meets light, he watches. Awaits.
The sight of him pulls something tight inside me. My pulse quickens, but my feet do not slow. I walk toward him steadily, the grass bending under each step, the hem of my dress whispering against my ankles.
His eyes catch the moonlight first—faint, aware. Then his mouth curves. His gaze drifts over the dark fabric clinging to my body, the bare hands, the loosened fall of my hair.
"You come dressed for mourning," his voice threads to me like smoke. "Tell me… is it yours?"
His head tilts slightly, pupils like flaring embers.
"Or mine?"
I do not answer him. Instead, I bend.
One knee presses into the cool grass, the chill seeping instantly through the fabric of my dress. My hands hover at my sides as I prepare to bow fully, to offer the posture I have been taught all my life—the only shape of surrender I know.
"Do not."
The words reverberate in the clearing as though carved into stone.
I freeze. My gaze lifts slowly.
His expression has changed. The amusement has thinned into something darker, almost fierce. It is not rage as men know it, but it burns all the same.
"You do not kneel," he steps forward from the shadow. The moon catches fully in his eyes now, and they gleam faintly, lit from within, a pale, terrible glow. "Not to monsters. Not to gods."
He comes closer still, until I can feel the cool of him against my skin.
"Never to me."
The air tightens around us. The grass stirs though there is no wind.
Confusion flickers, the world I have carried in my hands since childhood not molded in such shape. Kneeling has always meant obedience. Supplication. Safety. I thought—
"You are no prey, enchantress," he draws nearer. "Do not insult yourself."
My heart stumbles in my chest. His hand lifts, hovers near my face, close enough that I feel the absence of warmth.
The word rings differently now. For a moment, I do not understand them. Yet, slowly, I rise, the imprint of my knee left behind like a mark of something interrupted.
I swallow and lift my chin.
"If you leave the village untouched," I begin, forcing steadiness into my voice, "I shall give you what you seek."
The words taste like iron, but they do not falter on my tongue.
"Me."
It hangs between us, fragile and irrevocable. For a heartbeat, there is only the rustle of leaves.
Then he laughs.
It is soft at first, barely more than breath. It rolls through the clearing like distant thunder, not loud but deep enough to be felt in the bones. Not mockery alone—something else, almost amused by the shape of my thought.
"You think this a bargain?" he asks, stepping around me in a slow circle. His voice brushes my ear as he passes behind me. "That I hunger for your trembling shepherds?"
He comes to stand before me once more, eyes glinting.
"I have no interest in feeding upon your precious people. Their blood is sour with fear and rot. It clings to the tongue like decay."
A faint curl of disdain touches his mouth.
"As foul as their souls."
The words tremble in my throat before I can still them.
"Why slay Doamn? Irina, then?"
Her name sounds strange here, fragile in the mouth of the night.
He studies me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. The moon catches the defined line of his cheekbone, the faint hollow beneath it. When he speaks, his voice is softer, almost weary, as though I have finally asked the question he expected.
"Open your eyes, witch."
The word does not wound me the way it once did.
"She sought to bind you," he continues, stepping closer until I feel the brush of cold at my wrist. "To twist your path so you would not wed that pliant little rooster they call Radu."
Disdain twists the name.
"She would have seen you cast aside so that her own tender blossom might claim him in your stead."
My stomach tightens.
"No," I breathe.
"Yes."
His voice lowers further, almost intimate.
"She wove her wish into thread and bone. Tied it in linen and buried it where it might cling to your threshold. Words soaked in envy. Wishes rotted by longing."
My brows furrow in refusal, unable to stop what comes next.
"That is why I stopped her mouth with earth," he says, voice darkening. "Words soiled with such spite deserve no better grave."
A chill ripples through me.
"Ask your dear companion," he murmurs. "Sweet little Elena."
Her name settles between us like frost.
"Why does she avert her gaze when you speak of the bundle? Why did she urge you to silence? She knows what was done. She has known since the moment she saw the thread missing from her mother’s stores. Blue, was it not?"
His eyes gleam once again.
"She cannot bear it."
I shake my head, the motion instinctive.
"No," I whisper. "You lie."
The air grows colder.
"You saw it," he says softly. "You burned it with your own hands. You recognized the scent. You recognized the weave. You know whose fingers favor that shade."
The blue thread flashes again in my mind, woven through coarse linen.
"You know," he repeats.
My heart pounds so violently I feel it in my teeth. The certainty in his voice unsettles me more than anger would.
"What of Popa Vasile? A servant of God," I press through clenched teeth. "And you tore out his eyes. You nailed him like a beast to holy doors."
The forest stills. Even the wind seems to withdraw.
He does not recoil from the accusation.