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I knew this ribbon. It decorated the ends of Yana’s braids.
“Where did you get this?” I asked, not expecting an answer. A lump of ice was already forming in my guts, washing away the happiness of last night.
How had one of Yana’s ribbons come to be in the crow’s possession? It could have been as simple as the bird stealing it from her room if she’d left a window open… but knowing that Vostok was sliding into madness made me feel it was something more.
I turned it over in my fingers, letting the faint morning light glance off the silk threads.
The crow picked up the bread and followed me, cawing overhead as I walked into the Wood.
Everything was quiet in that beautiful, silent morning time. I wandered aimlessly at first, the ribbon twined through my fingers, scanning the Wood for anything out of place.
There was nothing. Even the Beasts were still asleep, and I had all of this wild land to myself.
But the feeling of something wrong wouldn’t leave me. The little hairs on the back of my neck were standing up, as though something horrendously awful lurked here, watching and waiting for me to finally spot it.
The crow nibbled his bread, showering crumbs down on me. I was still for many long minutes, hardly breathing as I listened. Bit by bit, the heightened senses of the monster within me began to emerge.
I heard mice squeaking in their burrows. The distant cry of a falcon. The babbling of a stream miles away.
And finally… a labored breath.
I turned south, following that sound. The ice grew in me with every step, that sense of wrongness permeating everything.
When I smelled the thick stench of copper, I knew it was her.
When I found her, I wasn’t surprised. There was nothing but that icy dread wrapping an iron fist around my heart, the pounding of my blood in my ears.
Yana was slumped against a tree. Her skirts were soaked with blood; her skin was so pale she already looked dead.
I knelt next to her, reaching out to take her cold hand, and Yana’s eyes opened.
She tried to smile, but it was a horrid grimace of pain instead. Tears pricked my eyes as I smiled back.
“It didn’t work,” she whispered. “I think… I took too much.”
“Too much of what?” It was impossible to keep my voice calm; it cracked halfway through. Her fingers twitched, and I realized she was holding bundles of herbs.
I pried them out of her hand, sniffing at them. I knew those leaves and that smell; the Augur had once showed them to me.
Pennyroyal and rue. These herbs were used to empty women’s wombs, and taking too much…
I swallowed the hard lump that had formed in my throat. Yana was pale from blood loss. I reached out and felt the hardened lump of her abdomen, and she only winced slightly; she was past saving.
I wasn’t going to ask why she was going to take these. There was only one reason she would have been this desperate.
“Who did this to you?” I asked her, letting the herbs scatter to the forest floor.
The light that had been guttering in her eyes came back strong; for a moment, she looked like the Yana I used to know. Her fingers felt like claws when they gripped mine.
“Father…” she whispered, forcing the words out. “I thoughtIwas the sin that caused all of this.”
I shook my head, but Yana squeezed me tighter. I didn’t want to believe the horror of such a thing… but of course I did. Just because it was awful didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
“You did nothing wrong,” I told her, stroking her face, pushing her hair back. God, her skin was so cold. “This sin isn’t yours.”
Her lips twitched. “No… but he made me a part of his. He made me believe it was my fault for so long.” She sighed, staring out into the Wood. “It’s peaceful out here. I never knew.”
My mind was racing. Even if I managed to bring her back to the Arbor, she was too far gone. I could not replace the blood she had lost. My monster was useless against this enemy working against her from the inside.
