Chapter Seven
The night opens around us.
The forest loosens its hold as we pass, the trees thinning until the lake reveals itself, its surface catching the moon in a long, trembling path of light. No wind stirs it. No creature breaks it. It waits.
He carries me as though I weigh nothing, one arm firm at my waist, the other supporting me beneath my back.
My legs remain wrapped around him, my bare body held close to his, skin to skin, breath to breath.
I feel the strength in him with every step, the quiet certainty of it, the way he moves as though this place already belongs to him.
Or perhaps to us.
The shore is soft beneath his feet. Damp earth, cool, giving slightly as he steps forward without hesitation, the water reaching for him, for us, as though it has been expecting our arrival.
The first touch of it climbs his ankles. Then mine.
Cold.
It should make me recoil. It should steal the breath from my lungs, drive the heat from my skin. It does not.
The fire in me does not yield; it only deepens.
He wades further, the water rising along his body, along mine, until it gathers at my hips, my waist, my chest where I press against him. The surface trembles with each movement, distorting the moonlight into something broken, something alive.
The silence holds us, solemn and vast, as though the world has withdrawn to leave us in this moment alone.
His hand shifts at my back. Lifts me.
I rise with him, my body drawn upward, held above the dark surface for a breath that feels suspended outside of time. Water slips from my skin in thin, glistening trails. My arms tighten around him, my head falling back for a moment, the sky wide above me, the moon bright and unblinking.
His gaze finds mine, without question. Only knowing.
Then I come back to him, to the place where he holds me.
Where I belong.
His mouth meets mine. The kiss unfolds slowly, as though it has been waiting far longer than either of us has drawn breath. I feel it move through me, through the places that have been broken and remade.
The water shifts around us. He draws me closer, and the world narrows again.
The lake holds us as we move within it, the surface breaking, reforming, carrying the shape of us in ripples that spread outward and vanish into the dark.
The cold wraps around my body, yet the heat remains, rising, answering, something that does not belong to the water or the night, but to us alone.
I hold him tighter.
My breath unravels against his throat, my body yielding and answering all at once. The rhythm finds us, slow at first, then deeper, drawn from something that belongs only to us.
The lake takes what we give and keeps it, blind and silent.
My head falls back, the sky opening above me, the moon blurring as my breath breaks into something I cannot quiet. His name forms without sound, carried in the movement, in the way I cling to him, in the way I do not want the moment to end.
He holds me through it. Steady. Unyielding. As though nothing in this world could take me from him now.
And there, beneath the moon, within the blind waters, we bind ourselves to one another.
***
His fingers close around mine, cool and certain, as we begin our walk through the trees.
The path unfolds beneath us, soft with moss, lined with roots I know by heart. The air is thick with earth and leaf and something deeper still, something that hums low beneath everything.
The trees thin. The dark loosens its hold, and the outline of the village emerges beyond it—roofs hunched beneath the paling sky, smoke rising in thin, uncertain lines.
We stop at the edge, not because he halts me. Something in me does.
His hand tightens slightly around mine, and I feel his gaze without turning.
We stand there, just beyond where the trees end, where the ground begins to change—less soft, less alive, pressed flat by feet that move always in the same paths.
The village sleeps.
My eyes move over it, slowly. The doorways, the narrow paths, the low roofs crouched close together—the shape of something small and contained, something that once felt vast enough to hold my whole life.
His thumb brushes lightly over the back of my hand. I hold it for a moment longer, then I let my fingers slip from his. The ground shifts beneath my feet as I step forward. The air changes—it does not welcome me, it does not resist me either. It simply… does not know me.
Behind me, the trees stand. Before me, the village opens.
I cross without looking back.
Smoke lingers low above the roofs, caught between beams and sky, as though the day never fully left. The paths I have walked since childhood stretch before me, pale under the moon, worn by feet that believed they knew where they were going.
I pass them.
The well stands where it always has, its rope coiled, its bucket resting against the stone. The church looms in the background, its shape heavy against the sky.
Nothing moves. Nothing calls.
My steps do not slow.
He follows beside me, silent as shadow, as though the night itself has taken form and chosen to walk at my side.
We stop at the first house. I know the shape of its roof, the way the wood splits near the latch, the small mark near the threshold where something heavy must have fallen long ago.
I stand before it, and for a breath, I do not move. The silence deepens, pressing in around us before my hand lifts.
The latch yields easily beneath my fingers, the door opening with a low, familiar sound that I have heard a thousand times. Darkness waits inside, unbroken.
I step across, turn back.
He stands where I left him, just beyond the threshold, his figure held in the thin silver of the moonlight. Waiting.
His gaze rests on me, patient, unyielding, as though this moment belongs to me alone.
The space between us holds, and I feel it—the boundary. Thin. Unseen. Absolute.
"Come."
The word leaves me softly, but it does not waver. It opens. Something shifts, a smile unraveling on his face before he moves. One foot, then the other. He crosses, and the threshold does not resist him. The darkness deepens. The house exhales, and the night steps inside with him.
They are already awake.
Huddled in the far corner, pressed against the wall as though they might sink into it if they try hard enough, Petru clutches a torch in one shaking hand, the flame guttering with every uneven breath he takes.
His wife crouches beside him, her fingers tangled in his sleeve, her lips moving too fast, prayers breaking over one another until they lose all shape.
"Stay back," Petru rasps, though his voice does not carry strength enough to command anything. The torch lifts higher, trembling in his grip. "In God’s name—"
Lucian turns his head slightly, searching for my gaze. I do not need to speak—inclining my head is all it takes.
The space between them closes in an instant. Petru cries out, thrusting the torch forward, the flame licking toward Lucian’s chest, toward his face.
It only makes him laugh, almost fond.
"Fire does not claim what has already passed beyond it," he murmurs.
The words ring like something final.
The torch falls to the ground as the old man's arm is caught, twisted with a force that does not strain. A sound follows, wrong in its essence—the crack of bone giving way beneath something far stronger than it was ever meant to withstand.
He screams, but it does not last long.
The body breaks beneath Lucian's hands as though it were no more than fragile wood, joints turning where they should not, limbs folding into shapes that cannot hold life within them. Blood spills, spreads across the floor in widening pools that catch the failing light.
Petru’s voice dissolves into something unrecognizable before it stops altogether, his body collapsing in on itself, emptied of anything that once made it human.
His wife screams. She tries to crawl away, her hands slipping in what remains, her breath tearing from her in ragged bursts that cannot carry her far enough, fast enough.
Lucian turns to her, but I move before he can touch her.
"Wait."
He stills.
The woman freezes where she is, her eyes snapping to me, something wild and desperate flaring within them, grasping at the shape of mercy before it has even been offered.
"Please—" she begins.
I do not answer. My hands reach for the small sack near the hearth, my fingers closing around the coarse fabric, feeling the weight of it shift. Fine white powder spills as I tilt it, dusting over her hair, her shoulders, her face, making her flinch. When she finally understands, it's too late.
"Please," her pleas turn to desperate cries. "I did not— I did not—"
I draw the fabric over her head.
It settles there, clinging where the damp of her breath catches it, shaping itself over her features until she is no longer a face, no longer a person, only a form that moves beneath it.
Her hands rise, clutching at it, panic blooming without use.
I turn before the sound has even begun behind me, already reaching for the door.
Her voice breaks once—muffled, strangled beneath the cloth—then fractures entirely into something that no longer carries words, only fear, only the body’s last, useless attempt to escape what has already been decided.
It does not last long; nothing does.
Outside, the night waits.
I step out into it without pause, without breath, without anything left that might turn me back, and I do not stop as the sounds behind me fade into silence.
The next door yields as easily as the first, the wood parting beneath my hand without resistance. The house breathes out its darkness to meet me, its silence thick, waiting.
"Come."
He enters.