Chapter Seven #3
For a fraction of a moment, hope flickers again in her eyes—misplaced, stubborn, refusing to die where it should.
Then his hand closes at her throat. The blade follows.
Her breath spills out of her in a wet, broken gasp, hands flying to her neck as though she might hold herself together, as though she might keep what is leaving her from going.
Blood slips through her fingers, fast, too fast, soaking the front of her nightgown, spilling down her arms, dripping from her wrists in steady, quiet lines.
Her fingers loosen, slide. Fall. Her body collapses at my feet, her head striking the floor with a hollow thud, her hair fanning around her as though she has simply lain down to rest.
The blood spreads, reaches the hem of my dress.
The door remains open behind us.
People still run, shadows breaking from doorways, from corners, from places where they thought themselves hidden. Some clutch children. Some carry nothing. All move toward the same place.
The church.
Before it, the stake still stands, blackened, split, the wood charred and twisted where the fire had taken it, where it had held. I do not look at it for long. The shape is familiar, distant, like something seen once, long ago, like a bruise that once ached and no longer does.
We pass it, and I feel it beside me—the shift in him. Something coiled beneath the stillness, something that remembers, that answers to what stands before us. The air around him tightens, the night itself seeming to lean away, to make space for what moves beneath his skin.
The square stretches before us, filled now with what remains—limbs bent wrong, mouths open where breath no longer comes, eyes fixed on a sky that does not look back.
The living ones do not see us until we are already among them. The first falls before he reaches the steps, his body striking the stone, the sound swallowed by the next cry, the next movement, the next breaking.
It does not stop.
Feet slip on blood, hands grasp at one another, at themselves, at the open space that narrows too quickly as bodies press toward the steps. Voices rise, pleading, calling out to the man within as though he might still open for them, as though the door has not already begun to close.
It shuts.
Wood meets stone with a final sound as the latch falls.
Those closest pound against it, fists striking, voices breaking into prayers, into cries, into something that fractures before it can be understood. The others gather behind them, pushing, pressing, trying to force their way through what will not yield.
"Father—please—"
"Open—"
Inside, something shifts, but silence answers. Popa Dorin has chosen.
Lucian laughs, almost delighted.
A man turns too late, his mouth still forming a prayer as his hand closes around his jaw and breaks it sideways, teeth scattering across the stone before he is thrown back into the others.
They stumble, fall, tangle together, and he is among them, tearing through them as though they are nothing more than reeds beneath a blade.
A woman slips, her body dragged down by the weight of those behind her.
She reaches up, fingers clawing at the steps, at the edge of the door that will not open.
Lucian’s hand finds her ankle, pulls. Her body slides back through the blood, her nails scraping uselessly against stone before he breaks her, the sound lost beneath the others.
The cries thin, then finally stop, the steps falling silent except for the slow, steady drip that remains.
The same wood stirs beneath my fingers as every other door they met, this one only larger. Heavier.
As though that might have been enough.
It gives without resistance, opening inward with a slow, hollow sound, revealing the dim interior, the candles still burning, their light trembling along the walls.
"Come."
The air shifts once more, and he enters.
Inside, the priest stands before the altar. The cross is clutched in his hand, his lips moving without pause, the words spilling out in a rush, each one thrown forward as though it might strike, might hold, might drive us back.
He does not look at Lucian. Only me.
"Depart—" his voice cracks, rises again, louder, "depart from this body—"
The water leaves his hand in sudden arcs, splashing across the space between us.
It strikes my arm.
A sound rises, a faint hiss that curls into the air and makes the skin beneath it blisters in pale, wet shapes that fade almost as soon as they form. The sensation flickers—brief, distant, ridiculous.
The priest's face has changed, the certainty fractured.
"Be gone—" he forces out, the cross trembling in his grip. "In the name of—"
Lucian closes the distance in a breath, hand closing around the priest’s throat, lifting him from the ground with a slow, deliberate ease. The vessel falls, shattering against the stone, water and fragments scattering across the floor.
The priest’s feet leave it.
His hands claw at Lucian’s wrist, the cross slipping from his grip, striking the ground, spinning once before coming to rest.
Lucian watches him. Smiles.
"You men of God," he drawls, almost fond. "You never fail to delight me."
The priest chokes, his lips still moving ceaselessly, still forming words that no longer reach anything.
"Always so certain the door will open for you… and never for anything else."
The candles burn low along the altar, their flames small, steady, untouched by what has entered this place. I take one. The wax is warm where it has begun to soften, the flame bending slightly as I lift it, as though it, too, recognizes what it is about to become.
I walk to him, and he sees me now. His eyes widen, not in recognition, nor mercy, but with something that trembles between both and finds neither. Still, his lips move. Still, he prays.
The candle touches cloth.
For a moment, nothing. Then the fabric darkens, curls where the flame catches.
It spreads slowly at first, licking along the edge of his sleeve, a thin line of orange that creeps upward, almost hesitant, as though testing what it has been given.
The smell rises with it, filling the air before heat has time to follow.
He never stops.
His voice wavers, falters, then steadies again, the words forcing themselves through a throat that no longer fully obeys him. The fire climbs, finding the folds of his cassock, slipping into them, feeding, growing.
Lucian does not let him go.
The flame deepens. It takes hold. The cloth peels back to reveal the skin beneath, and when it does, the sound changes. A wet crackle replaces the soft hiss, the fire no longer skimming but consuming.
His voice breaks, an involuntary sound escaping him before he forces the words back, louder now, faster, as though he might outrun what climbs his body, what eats through him piece by piece.
The skin blisters, swells, splits open in places where heat gathers strongest, the flesh beneath exposed, curling inward as it feeds without pause.
Finally, the prayer ends. The scream begins in its place.
It tears out, raw and uncontained, nothing left to shape it, nothing left to hold it back. The body jerks, twisting in Lucian’s grip, the fire now everywhere, devouring cloth and flesh alike.
At last, Lucian releases him.
The priest falls, but he does not stay down.
He runs blindly, limbs striking against curtains, against walls, leaving streaks of fire where he touches them, the flames catching, taking hold.
His hands claw at himself, at the burning cloth, tearing at it, pulling skin with it, his screams breaking into something that no longer resembles anything known.
His body convulses once, twice, then it stops. It hits the floor hard, the impact sending a breath from him that does not return.
The fire does not stay where it is given.
It crawls.
From cloth to flesh, from flesh to floor, from floor to beam, it finds every place that will take it and claims it without hesitation. The wood drinks it in, dry and eager, the boards blackening, splitting, opening beneath the heat as the flame spreads in long, hungry tongues across the ground.
The altar flickers.
The shadows tremble along the walls, stretching, bending, distorting into shapes that do not hold.
Lucian stands behind me, but I do not leave. Not yet.
There is something left.
The heat gathers around my legs as I walk, the edge of my dress catching briefly where embers brush against it, then dying just as quickly, as though the fire does not know what to do with me. The floor gives slightly beneath each step, weakening, yet still it holds.
The altar stands ahead. The candles there still burn, their small flames steady despite the larger ones rising behind them, as though they belong to something else entirely.
She is there. Mother.
She has drawn herself into the corner, her body drawn inward, her hands lifted as though she might shield herself from what has already found her. The smoke curls around her face, her hair clinging damply to her temples, her breath coming in shallow, broken pulls that do not seem to fill her lungs.
Her eyes find me. They widen, then soften.
Tears spill all over her face, cutting clean lines through the ash that has settled against her skin. Her lips tremble, trying to form something, trying to hold onto it long enough to give it shape.
"Forgive me," she whispers.
Her voice is smaller than I have ever heard it.
"Forgive me, copilul meu… feti?a mea…"[32] she says, hands shaking as they press to her chest. "I was afraid, God, I was so afraid. I thought it could save you—"
Her arms fall open.
"I am sorry," she says again, the words dissolving even as they leave her. "I am so sorry…"
A breath.
"Puiul meu[33]," she whispers, softer now, the old name slipping free without thought, without guard. "My little girl…"
The fire climbs behind me. The heat deepens. The wood groans again, louder now, a long, low sound that runs through the structure, through the air, through everything that still stands.
She looks at me as though I am still hers, and for a breath, something tightens in my chest—a memory without shape, a warmth without place.
Something that remembers the shape of her hand smoothing my hair, the sound of her breath beside mine in the dark.
The weight of being held without fear. Protected.
But then I see it.
It is slight. A shift more than a movement—her shoulders drawing back, her body leaning away, her fingers faltering in the space between us as though something unseen has risen there. Her breath catches. Her eyes remain on me, wide, shining, pleading—
and afraid.
Afraid of me. The same way they were. The same way they all were.
She still weeps, still looks at me as if I am hers, as if I could be gathered back into her arms if only she speaks the right words. But I have seen it now.
Behind her, the shadow gathers. He is already there.
Her eyes remain fixed on mine, wide and pleading, searching for something that cannot return to her.
I look at her.
At the tears that shine in the firelight. At the mouth that shaped prayers over me until they became heavier than breath. At the hands that taught me to bow, to lower my eyes, to shrink myself into something small enough to be kept.
"Pray, Mama," I say softly.
My voice does not tremble.
"Pray as you did for me. Call to him. Let us see if he answers."
Her lips part, a broken sound catching there before it can become a word.
The fire crackles louder now, the heat pressing closer, curling into the space between us.
Her hands lift again, but this time not toward me—upward, trembling, fingers forming the shape of something she has repeated her whole life.
"Do not be afraid," I murmur. "You go where you have always longed to be."
For a moment, she believes it. I see it flicker across her face—fragile, desperate, clinging to something that has already abandoned her. Her head bows. Her lips begin to move, the prayer returning, steadying her even now, even here.
I turn away.
Behind me, there is a quick, wet sound. Steel meeting flesh. A breath breaking where it should have continued. The prayer collapsing into silence before it can reach its end.
It is over.
The fire rushes in to fill what remains.
Something touches my cheek. I lift my hand and find it there—a single tear, warm against my skin. I let it fall, watch as it strikes the wood at my feet and vanishes at once, taken by the heat.
I do not turn back. I step out.
The night meets me again, but it is no longer whole.
Fire follows at my back, pouring through the open mouth of the doorway, spilling down the wooden frame, devouring beam and roof alike.
The structure groans like something alive being unmade, each collapse a slow surrender, each spark carried upward like souls denied rest, scattering into the dark.
The steps are slick beneath my feet. The square no longer breathes. Only the fire does.
He comes to me.
I feel him before I see him, the air tightening, bending, answering to his presence as it always has. When I turn, he is already watching me, his face marked, his hands dark with what he has taken, his mouth curved in something that does not soften.
We stand there, between the crumbling church and the ruined stake. The fire rises behind us. The dead gather at our feet.
He reaches for me, and I do not hesitate.
My hands find him as easily as breath, unyielding, drawing me toward him as though there has never been a moment where I was not meant to move this way. When our mouths meet, it is blood and heat and something deeper that has no name left for it, something that consumes rather than joins.
I taste it.
On him.
On myself.
I deepen the kiss, my mouth parting against his, taking what he gives, giving back in equal measure, the taste of death no longer foreign, no longer wrong. His lips move against mine, down, to my throat, where the marks still linger, where the skin remembers him even now.
I tilt my head in offering—but not as I was taught. In knowing. In want.
The flames rise higher.
They crown us.
They bear witness.
The first pale breath of dawn stretches across the sky, touching the thinning smoke, the bodies, the ruined wood—and still I stand, still I hold him, still I remain where the night holds.