"No," I whisper. "You lie."
The air grows colder.
"You saw it," he says softly. "You burned it with your own hands. You recognized the scent. You recognized the weave. You know whose fingers favor that shade."
The blue thread flashes again in my mind, woven through coarse linen.
"You know," he repeats.
My heart pounds so violently I feel it in my teeth. The certainty in his voice unsettles me more than anger would.
"What of Popa Vasile? A servant of God," I press through clenched teeth. "And you tore out his eyes. You nailed him like a beast to holy doors."
The forest stills. Even the wind seems to withdraw.
He does not recoil from the accusation.
Instead, he steps closer. The space between us shrinks until I feel the pull of him like a change in pressure before a storm.
"Why do you think that is?" he asks quietly.
His voice has changed again, threaded with something dark that makes the air feel heavier in my lungs.
"Did you never feel his gaze upon you?" he continues.
My throat tightens.
"Did you truly believe," he murmurs, "that your soul required such constant tending? That you alone had to be summoned again and again to confess what others were permitted to forget?"
The memories stir whether I will them to or not.
The frequent calls. The private instructions. The pride I felt at being chosen for greater devotion, at being seen as especially in need of guidance. Especially worthy of correction.
He watches the movement of my throat as though it answers him.
"I did not take his eyes as punishment. I did it to silence them."
The clearing seems to shrink.
"He could not cease looking at you. He made you bow your head so he might stare down the hollow of your bodice and called it devotion."
"No," I breathe.
But the denial lacks force.
"I tore the eyes that watched you bathe with a rosary clenched in his fist," he presses, voice vibrating in my bones. "Prayers on his lips while his thoughts wandered where they ought not."
My lungs falter.
Images shift—small details I never held long enough to examine.
"You lie," I say again, but the words lack force.
His expression darkens.
"Tell me, enchantress," he murmurs, his voice dropping to a velvet rasp that curls along my spine, "did it feel holy when he pressed that rosary to your lips and bade you to repent?"
The ground tilts. My body remembers before my mind can refuse—the hard beads against my mouth, the command to kiss them, the warmth of his fingers near my skin, the confusion coiling in my chest that I had called shame as I was made to speak the prayer again.
