Beneath the fear, beneath the confusion, something else flickers—small, quiet, almost hidden even from myself. A strange stillness, slipping through the cracks of my panic before I can stop it. If they doubt… if they hesitate… if this holds even for a moment—
My heart stutters once.
Then the wedding cannot begin.
A space opens where it had pressed so heavily only moments before. A thin, fragile space, barely there, but enough to feel. Enough to breathe through, if only for an instant.
Before the thought can take shape, before I can decide whether to crush it or hold it close—
The men return.
Their footsteps reach us first, heavy and purposeful against the ground. The murmurs falter. The crowd shifts, turning as one toward them.
"We found something."
The voices reach us before the men do, loud, breathless, carrying something like triumph twisted with fear. They push through the crowd, and I see it at once.
The box.
My father’s box.
It hangs from one man’s hand, the worn wood unmistakable even from a distance, the grain darkened where my fingers have touched it again and again. My stomach drops.
"No—"
The word tears out of me, but it comes too late.
He throws it to the ground.
The wood cracks on impact, the lid splitting, hinges snapping with a dry, splintering sound. The contents spill outward in a scatter of stems and leaves and small wrapped bundles, rolling across the dirt at the centre of the square.
A collective gasp ripples through the crowd.
The herbs lie exposed, stripped of the quiet care with which I kept them. Pale sprigs of yarrow. Dark, shriveled berries. Twisted roots, still clinging to bits of earth. Thin stems of mugwort, their scent rising faintly even here. And among them, the moonflowers—petals curled inward now, soft and ghostlike, meant only to be gathered beneath the night sky.
They look wrong like this.
Not in my hands. Not in their place.
The silver dagger lands last, skidding across the ground before coming to rest near the broken wood. The blade catches the light, and the dark stain along its edge deepens where the sun touches it.
"I told you!" Petru shouts, almost in victory.
A murmur rises.
"Witchcraft—"
"Filth—"
"She hides these things—"
I push myself forward on my knees, my hands hovering over the scattered pieces, not daring to touch them now. "They are for healing," I say, my voice shaking, too thin against the weight of their fear. "They are not—my father taught me—they are not what you think—"
The words tangle. Break. I do not know where to begin, how to untangle years of quiet practice into something they will hear as anything but guilt.
My breath comes too fast. My heart pounds so hard it hurts.
"They are not evil," I try again, but it sounds weaker this time, even to me.
