Chapter 36 Confessional
CONFESSIONAL
Both Serban and Magda had dreamed of Ossivian the night before, and he told her that was the sign—that the hour had come for her to hear the gods' design with her own ears.
That night they stood in the stables while Nicolae saddled the brown mare and his cream-colored gelding, the air thick with the scent of hay and the soft clatter of metal buckles being drawn tight.
Magda paced the corridor just beyond the door, restless as a young doe sensing a coming storm.
“You can return, you know,” Serban said. It slipped out more gently than he intended. She didn't have to fumble through this new existence alone. She could come and go as she pleased—so long as she was discreet, so long as she did not endanger his household.
She paused, her brows drawing together. “I didn't think you wanted me here. I felt like I was a burden.” Her words trailed off softly.
A burden. He winced at the term. He would never have chosen it himself—not even in those early days when Ossivian had first laid this charge at his feet and resentment had bloomed in his chest. The guilt lodged sharp as a thorn beneath his ribs.
He cleared his throat, steadying his voice, hoping the sincerity would carry.
“I am sorry I made you feel that way, Magda. It was never my intention.”
And it was the truth. Somewhere between her questions, her fiery temper, and her unbroken will, he had come to enjoy her presence—more than he cared to admit aloud.
Despite all she had suffered, despite the grief that would likely haunt her for centuries, she still carried curiosity like a flame cupped in her hands.
A keen mind, unafraid to probe or challenge.
It had been a very long time since he'd met anyone who could do that.
“Any time,” he added quietly. “The room will remain yours. Unlocked.” He added, small smile at his lips, trying to convince her that he finally trusted her, almost wishing she'd use that sarcastic wit against him.
She shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know what to say, Serban.
I appreciate the offer. Truly. But I know you have your rules—and I’m afraid I would break them.
Stepping into the petty conflicts of men, the very disputes that put my countrymen at risk…
that is exactly where I would find myself.
” Her voice thinned as she searched for more justification, then abandoned the effort with a small shake of her head.
“But before any of that, I need to speak with this cave dweller.”
In that moment her face looked unbearably young.
He forgot, sometimes, that she was still only a girl—though she had lived through more in a handful of years than many did in a lifetime.
“The offer stands,” he said simply. “Come.
We'll ride to Ossivian. I'll teach you how to find him, should he ever call you again when I am not there.” His father had served as conduit for the creature, just as Serban now did—an unwanted bridge between mortal will and something older.
He had always assumed that strange ability passed through blood like any other inheritance.
But watching Magda now, pale and resolute in the lantern light, he wondered whether the tether binding her to Ossivian had formed by lineage—or by design.
They rode in silence for many miles. Then, without warning, Magda's voice drifted across the space between them—soft at first, fragile.
She began to speak of her life and the twisted path that had delivered her to his doorstep.
He wasn't sure if she spoke to him, or if she merely spoke the words to hear them aloud.
“I fell in love with Caius when we were children. Dani, Caius, and I were inseparable, even though each of us belonged to a different world. When we were small, no one cared. But Buna warned me to stay away from Caius. We shared the same birthday, and both of our mothers died that night…” She explained how her grandmother saw the signs in the smoke that foretold her tragedy.
He slowed his horse until he rode beside her.
She kept her gaze fixed on the road ahead, the night swallowing her expression as she continued her story.
She was speaking to give shape to what had broken her, to hear the pieces laid out in order.
She spoke of her foolish infatuation, and how she had lain with the boyar's son.
There was no shame in her voice—none. Another girl might have whispered such a confession, but Magda carried it like a truth she refused to hide.
She was weary, yes, worn thin by grief and violence, but not bowed.
If anything, her chin lifted a fraction higher in defiance of all she had endured.
Serban imagined her briefly, scared, discarded on the street, a young woman with no options, and his heart—what was left of it, he supposed—hurt for her.
Hurt in a way he hadn't let himself feel in centuries.
The only sound between them was the dull thud of hooves on the packed earth, and the steady unraveling of the truth she had kept locked inside her.
Tears slid down her cheeks, glinting like dew in the moonlight, but she did not hide them.
She spoke as if the night itself had demanded a reckoning.
Only now did she trust him enough to reveal the moment her life shattered—and the horror that followed.
And he found himself wishing he could go back and shield that girl she had been from the brutality of the world that had shaped her.
If he could have warned her that day he saw her picking apples, he would have.
But she would not have listened, just as she hadn't to her grandmother.
She went on, speaking of her husband Dani with a reverence usually reserved for saints, and he found himself wondering at the sort of man capable of loving with such steadiness—without demand, without condition.
It was a kind of devotion he had rarely witnessed, and never fully trusted.
He kept his horse even with hers, careful not to crowd her, careful not to fall back.
Close enough that she would feel his presence if she reached for it.
Far enough to let her speak without the pressure of his gaze.
Her eyes remained fixed on the road ahead, as though the narrow ribbon of earth were drawing the truth out of her step by step—each word pulled loose by the rhythm of the ride, each confession laid down behind them like hoofprints in the dust. She fell silent, her pain hanging in the air between them like a living thing.
“I loved my daughter, and I loved Dani in my own way, but I hated my life.” She said at last, spilling out with a shuddering breath, the kind one releases only when a secret finally escapes the walls built to contain it.
Her honesty struck him—not for its revelation, but for the steadiness with which she held it.
There was no shame in her voice. Only the weight of someone who had seen too much, survived too much, to pretend anymore.
He let the silence stretch a moment before he spoke.
“You were never meant for a small life, Magda,” he said quietly.
“No wonder it felt wrong on you.” And he meant it.
They rode on in silence, her mind finally still. He could feel her sensing Ossivian now—those faint, instinctive signals that tugged at her just as they did him—drawing them closer with every mile.
After a time, the road split before them. To the right, the path wound down toward the river bend. To the left, the trail climbed sharply, curling up the hillside toward the bluff and, beyond it, the cave where the creature had summoned Serban five weeks ago.
He drew his horse to a stop. Magda, feeling the same pull he did, turned toward the rise.
She looked at Serban, a question written plainly across her face.
“To the right,” he said quietly, “that is where I found you that night.” He tried to keep his voice gentle, though the memory cut like a blade.
She deserved the truth—all of it. She deserved the right to choose whether to face that darkness again.
Magda drew a slow breath and straightened in the saddle.
The young woman he had taken in—frightened, grieving, raw—was gone.
In her place sat a young woman who had endured the unendurable, died in agony, and clawed her way back into the world.
Strength born from violence, ash and blood.
It struck him then—this was the first time he'd seen her not as his charge, or a task given to him by the gods, but as what she had become. Fire once, now tempered with ice.
“Show me,” she said, no tremor in her voice. She reined her horse to the right and he kicked his to catch up.
Just a few minutes ride further brought them to the place where he had found her—the scent of her blood pulling him through the trees that night, her body battered and broken in ways no human should survive.
He remembered it with bitter clarity: how she had felt no fear when he approached her, only that steely, impossible resolve.
He reined in his horse and dismounted, letting the reins fall as he walked toward the spot.
Magda followed, silent, steps sure despite what this place meant.
“Here,” he said quietly, resting his hand on the granite boulders—ancient stones tumbled long ago by the force of the river and time. “This is where your body came to rest.”
Her dried blood still marked the stone, dark flecks stubborn against the weeks of soft, unceasing rain.
She stepped closer and set her hand beside his, as if the granite might offer her an answer, some meaning to anchor herself to.
But there was no sense in any of it, and the proud tilt of her chin faltered.
Serban's reaction was instinctive. He reached for her without thinking, drawing her against him, tucking her into his chest as though he could shield her from the memory itself. That was when she broke—silent, wrenching sobs shaking her slim frame—grief she had carried alone for far too long.
He told himself this was a small offering to her—to give her a place to rest, to be seen for all she had been and all she was becoming, before she gathered the hard armor she wore now and steeled herself for what lay ahead.
But something else stirred in him, something he had not invited.
A seed, planted without his consent, had taken root.
Some part of her had lodged itself inside him, and he knew that when she tore it free, it would leave a hollow behind.
A memory surfaced—the night he had taught her to feed from a human.
The first rush of blood had overwhelmed her, heat and strength surging through limbs still untrained in containing it.
Hunger had sharpened into something perilously intimate, power tangling with instinct until the two were indistinguishable.
For the briefest instant, he had imagined not stopping her.
Not stepping back. He had wondered what it would be like to close that final inch of distance.
To let desire override restraint. To answer the pull that had nothing to do with the frenzy of blood.
He had been close—close to staying—close to taking comfort where he had no claim.
Close to turning a moment of vulnerability into something neither of them could have undone.
Instead, he had pushed her away. Not because he felt nothing, but because he felt too much.
This time it was Magda who pulled away, turning her face from his watchful gaze as she wiped her tears with the back of her hand.
Then she straightened—shoulders back, chin lifted—and walked to her horse.
By the time she swung into the saddle, every trace of vulnerability had vanished.
She wheeled toward the fork in the road they'd left behind, toward the path that led to Ossivian, toward whatever destiny had set its claws into her.
Serban followed, keeping a respectful distance.
The trees thinned, the shadows shifted, and in what felt like the space of a single breath, the mouth of the cave came into view—gaping like a black maw in the hillside.
As Magda urged her horse forward, he found himself wishing she'd slow.
Just a little. He wasn't ready to let her go.