Chapter Seven #2
Doamn? Marica does not scream at first. She stares, her hands still dusted in flour, her mouth parting slowly as she takes in the sight of me, of what stands in the doorway where safety once was.
Sound comes only when he reaches her—late, thin, breaking as his hand closes and her body folds, the table overturning beneath her weight, her blood spilling across the dough she had not yet shaped.
The door closes behind us.
We walk.
Another house. Another threshold. Another voice rising, cut short before it can form words that might matter.
Mihai the miller answers the door with an iron blade in hand, his face drawn tight with something that might have been courage if it had not trembled so visibly. He does not speak. He strikes.
The millstone outside still turns faintly in the wind, a slow, grinding sound that continues even as his body is broken, even as the blood spreads beneath him in dark, widening shapes.
We walk again, door after door. The night does not change. The village unfolds itself to us, offering its rooms, its beds, its corners where people gather and whisper and believe themselves unseen. I open. He enters. Blood gathers. Silence follows.
At one door, we find them waiting.
A man and a woman, their bodies pressed before the smaller shapes behind them, arms spread as though they might shield what cannot be shielded. Their children cling to them, faces buried, voices trembling into soft, broken cries that fill the room before we even cross into it.
"Please—" the father says at once, his hands lifting not to fight, but to beg. "Not them—take me—take us—but not them—"
Lucian does not move. He waits.
The children look at me. Their faces are wet, streaked with tears, their eyes too wide, too bright, their breaths coming in small, panicked bursts. One of them clutches the other’s hand so tightly the colour drains beneath the skin.
Something passes, then stills.
"I was someone’s child too."
My voice does not rise. It does not break.
The woman sobs, shaking her head. "They are innocent—they are—"
"They are yours," I cut in.
My gaze does not leave them.
"They are already like you." The words fall one after another, unhurried. "Quick to turn. Quick to cast stones at what they do not understand and call it sin. They take what you give them and shape it into something harder."
The mother’s sob turns desperate, her arms tightening around the children, pulling them closer, as though she might hide them within herself, fold them back into something untouched.
"They learn from you. They grow into what you are. Into what you have always been."
The smallest child cries harder, burying their face against her, their small hands clutching at fabric, at anything that might hold.
"You said it yourself," I murmur. "Evil must be cut out at the root."
My head inclines, once.
Lucian moves.
It is quick. The children first.
A blur of motion, too fast to follow, their cries cut short in the same breath they rise, their small bodies falling without time to form it. The sound they make when they strike the floor is almost nothing, swallowed by the stillness that follows.
The woman screams without voice.
The man lunges, but it ends before it begins, his body folding in on itself, limbs breaking at angles that cannot hold, his breath crushed from him in a sound that does not become a word.
Blood spreads.
It finds the children.
It gathers.
The woman’s voice breaks into something unrecognizable as Lucian turns to her, her hands still reaching, still grasping for what is already gone. He does not linger.
The room falls silent.
Doors open before we reach them now. Voices spill into the path, calling names that go unanswered, warnings that come too late.
Shapes move through the dark—men with torches, women clutching shawls to their throats, bare feet striking the earth as they run without direction, without knowing where safety might still be found.
There is none.
Bodies lie where they fell.
Some half-hidden in shadow, others thrown plainly across the path, limbs wrong, faces turned toward nothing. Blood darkens the ground in uneven patches, soaking into the dirt, carried by footsteps that smear it further, until the path itself seems to bleed beneath us.
The last house stands ahead, bigger, broader, its door shut tight. Not for long.
My hand lifts. The wood gives beneath it as though it has been waiting for this touch, the latch yielding without sound, the door opening inward with a slow, deliberate ease.
I step inside.
"Come."
The air is thick. Fear sits in it, heavy enough to taste.
Radu stands first, his body held rigid, a knife gripped in his hand so tightly his knuckles pale.
His father is beside him, broader, steadier in stance but not in breath.
His mother cowers behind them, a torch lifted, its flame shaking, scattering light across their faces in fractured, trembling lines.
And behind Radu—
Elena.
Her fingers clutch at the back of his shirt, her face half-hidden, her eyes wide and fixed on me, on what stands in the doorway where something else should have been.
My smile comes easily. I feel it before I think it, the quiet curve of it, something that does not ask to be understood.
My gaze drops to the dress that clings to my skin, once white, now soaked through, its fabric torn and scorched where the fire has taken it. It hangs from me in ruined folds, the hem trailing faintly against the floor.
My fingers brush it lightly before I look back up.
They are all looking at me. At us. At what stands before them, what has entered their home without being asked, without being stopped, without anything left that might bar the way.
Radu’s father steps forward first, the torch raised, his voice breaking into something that tries to command, to reclaim what has already slipped from his grasp.
It ends before it begins. Lucian’s hand closes at his throat, the flame falling, skidding across the floor as the man is lifted and undone in the same motion, his body folding inward with a sound too soft for what it is.
He drops where he stood, the life leaving him without struggle.
His mother cries out, but it is short lived. A single movement and she is silenced, her hands still half-raised as though they might yet reach for something that no longer exists.
Only Radu remains standing. The knife slips from his hand, striking the floor with a hollow sound, his arm trembling with something he cannot master.
The boy I once knew flickers there for a moment—wide-eyed, uncertain—before it is swallowed by something smaller, something that cannot hold itself upright beneath what stands before him.
He stumbles back, his breath breaking, his gaze darting, searching for escape where none remains.
Lucian stops before him. Taller. Unyielding.
"So this is the hand," he murmurs, eyes dropping to Radu’s fingers, "that closed in her hair."
No answer comes.
"You dragged her to her through the dirt as though she were less than the ground that bore you," Lucian continues. "Pulled her like an animal to her death… while she cried out. While she bled."
Radu shakes his head, a sound tearing from him, half plea, half denial, but it does not reach far.
"And you lived through it."
Lucian's gaze lifts, cold.
"That was your mistake."
His hand finds Radu’s wrist, and the first crack splits the air.
Radu’s scream tears out of him, immediate, as his hand folds wrong.
Bone gives, one after the other, each break answering the last, each one slow enough to be felt, to be understood.
Fingers bend where they should not, collapse into themselves until the hand that once held, that once pulled and tore.
Now it hangs wrong, useless, no longer shaped for harm or anything at all.
His knees buckle as the pain takes him, as his body tries and fails to pull away.
Lucian lets go.
Radu's body hits the ground, his broken hand clutching at itself, his breath coming in ragged, sobbing bursts, his voice stripped of anything that once resembled pride.
Lucian watches him in delight for a second, before he bends again.
His hand closes in Radu’s hair and the scalp tears with a wet, sickening sound, strands ripping free with pieces of flesh that follow, leaving behind raw, exposed skin that shines beneath the candlelight.
Blood follows, running down his face, into his eyes, his mouth, his voice breaking into something unrecognizable as he thrashes beneath it, his hands clawing uselessly at Lucian’s arm, at the air, at anything that might make it stop.
It does not.
Elena screams, but Lucian does not care for her.
His hand rises again, and the blow lands.
Radu’s body leaves the ground, strikes the wall with a force that cracks something deeper than bone, his head snapping back, the sound dull as it meets the wood. He falls where he lands, no longer moving, no longer shaped by anything living.
Elena is already moving before we do, her knees striking the floor, her hands reaching, finding the ruined edge of my dress as though it might still mean something. Her fingers clutch at the fabric, smearing it further, tightening with a desperation that rattles her whole body.
"Raveena—" the name breaks, reshaping itself into something smaller. "Please… please, I am sorry—"
Her tears fall endless, catching on her lips, her chin, her voice unraveling with them.
"I only ever wanted to protect you," she pleads, her grip tightening. "Since we were little, you remember—you remember—"
Her forehead dips, almost touching me.
"Forgive me," she whispers. "I am so sorry. Do not do this, please. We are the same."
I look down at her.
Her fingers dig into the cloth. Her breath shakes. Her voice clings to something that no longer answers.
My hand lifts in a small gesture.
Enough.
Lucian steps forward.