My hair hangs loose down my back, unbound, unhidden. I wear no rosary at my throat, no blade at my thigh. My hands are empty. My pockets bare. I have brought nothing with which to bargain.
Only myself.
The night air clings to my skin, cool and damp. Each breath I draw tastes of moss and old bark and something deeper beneath it, something metallic and waiting. My heart beats hard against my ribs, but it does not falter.
I know the path without looking for it, without searching. My body remembers.
Roots rise and fall beneath my steps. Branches brush my shoulders as if in recognition. The forest guides me until the clearing opens, a widespill of silver light pooling in the grass. My breath grows taut as I step into it, my skin damp with the fine sheen of night.
There, in the seam where shadow meets light, he watches. Awaits.
The sight of him pulls something tight inside me. My pulse quickens, but my feet do not slow. I walk toward him steadily, the grass bending under each step, the hem of my dress whispering against my ankles.
His eyes catch the moonlight first—faint, aware. Then his mouth curves. His gaze drifts over the dark fabric clinging to my body, the bare hands, the loosened fall of my hair.
"You come dressed for mourning," his voice threads to me like smoke. "Tell me… is it yours?"
His head tilts slightly, pupils like flaring embers.
"Or mine?"
I do not answer him. Instead, I bend.
One knee presses into the cool grass, the chill seeping instantly through the fabric of my dress. My hands hover at my sides as I prepare to bow fully, to offer the posture I have been taught all my life—the only shape of surrender I know.
"Do not."
The words reverberate in the clearing as though carved into stone.
I freeze. My gaze lifts slowly.
His expression has changed. The amusement has thinned into something darker, almost fierce. It is not rage as men know it, but it burns all the same.
"You do not kneel," he steps forward from the shadow. The moon catches fully in his eyes now, and they gleam faintly, lit from within, a pale, terrible glow. "Not to monsters. Not to gods."
He comes closer still, until I can feel the cool of him against my skin.
"Never to me."
The air tightens around us. The grass stirs though there is no wind.
Confusion flickers, the world I have carried in my hands since childhood not molded in such shape. Kneeling has always meant obedience. Supplication. Safety. I thought—
"You are no prey, enchantress," he draws nearer. "Do not insult yourself."
My heart stumbles in my chest. His hand lifts, hovers near my face, close enough that I feel the absence of warmth.
The word rings differently now. For a moment, I do not understand them. Yet, slowly, I rise, the imprint of my knee left behind like a mark of something interrupted.
I swallow and lift my chin.
"If you leave the village untouched," I begin, forcing steadiness into my voice, "I shall give you what you seek."
The words taste like iron, but they do not falter on my tongue.
"Me."
It hangs between us, fragile and irrevocable. For a heartbeat, there is only the rustle of leaves.
