The candle lifts.
Light shifts with her as she rises.
For a moment she stands there, looking at me, the flame trembling in her hand. Then she turns.
The barn darkens with each step she takes, the circle of light shrinking, pulling away, until it slips through the door with her and vanishes.
I am left in the obscurity once more, my eyes straining toward the place where the light disappeared. My chest tightens, a silent, urgent prayer forming without words.
Let her be safe.
The dark does not answer.
***
Hands pull me into consciousness again.
They hoist me upward without care, the rope at my wrists tightening as my weight shifts. My leg drags uselessly behind me, the trap clanking against the ground, iron striking dirt and stone in uneven rhythm.
I wait for the pain.
It does not come the way it did before. It is there, somewhere, but distant now, swallowed by something larger, something that dulls everything. My body moves without me.
The door opens, and light strikes. It floods my eyes so suddenly I flinch, my head turning away on instinct, but the hands holding me do not slow. I blink against it, vision swimming, shapes forming and dissolving as I am pulled forward into the square.
Voices surround me, too many of them to make out the words.
My feet stumble, fail to find the ground properly, and I lurch between them, held upright only by the grip on my arms. My breath catches against the cloth still bound across my mouth. I try to speak. Nothing comes.
Then I see it.
A post stands at the centre of the square, driven deep into the earth before the church doors. The wood is fresh, pale where it has been cut, the base darkened already by soil and shadow. The ground around it is bare, cleared. Waiting.
No.
Understanding slams through me, louder than anything else.
My chest seizes. A sound forces itself against the gag, trapped, choked. I thrash without thinking, my body lurching violently against the hands that hold me.
They tighten.
"Hold her—"
"She knows—"
"She must not break free—"
I twist, kick, clawing at the air, at them, at anything, but my strength is not enough. The post grows larger, nearer, real, and my limbs are dragged back into place no matter how much I fight.
For a moment, the rope is cut from my arms. I wrench free in a single heartbeat, my body surging forward on instinct alone, a broken, desperate attempt to run, to reach anything beyond this place—
A hand strikes my face.
My head snaps to the side with the force of it. Light bursts behind my eyes. My body stumbles, collapses back into their hold before I can catch myself, the taste of blood flooding my mouth.
"Enough," Radu’s father snaps, his voice calm in a way that chills more than anger would.
Hands close on me again, and the wood is at my back before I can resist, rough and splintered where it presses into my skin. They force my arms behind it, higher than they should go, pulling until my shoulders strain, until something in them feels as though it might give.
