I try to pull free, but something inside my leg tears further. The world flashes white.
The trap does not yield. The movement sends another surge of agony through me, tearing something deeper, something final. The edges of my sight flicker, when I hear footsteps approaching.
Radu is running toward me, his face pale, his breath coming hard. Relief crashes through me so suddenly it almost feels like another wound.
"Radu—" The name barely forms. I reach for him, my hand shaking, slick with dirt and blood. "Please—"
He slows as he reaches me, and for a heartbeat, our eyes meet. His hand lifts. I reach for it—
His fingers close in my hair.
My head snaps back, pain ripping across my scalp as though the skin itself is being peeled away. A scream tears from me then, raw and broken, echoing through the trees. My hands fly upward, grasping at his wrist, at anything I can reach.
"I have her!" he shouts in fierceness. "I caught her!"
"No—" I choke, clawing at him, my fingers slipping against his skin.
The forest looms just ahead.
Close.
So close.
I reach toward it, one hand outstretched, fingers grasping at empty air.
He pulls me back from it.
My body drags across the ground, my trapped leg following, the iron jaws grinding deeper into torn flesh. Something shifts inside it, something that should not move, and the pain explodes upward, blinding. Blood streaks the earth behind me in a dark trail. I feel bone scrape where it should not. My vision fractures.
"Stop—please—" The words dissolve into cries as another violent pull yanks me forward.
My hands scramble against the dirt, fingers digging in, trying to find something to hold, something to stop the movement. Nails break. Skin tears. I clutch at roots, at stones, at anything that might anchor me, but each grip slips, each hold fails, and I am pulled onward, my body trailing after him like something broken.
My scalp burns where his hand grips tighter, strands of hair tearing free beneath his fingers. I feel them give way, feel the searing sting where they rip from my head. My neck strains, my vision blurring with tears I cannot control.
"Please—" I choke again, my voice fading to nothing.
He does not stop.
By the time he drags me back into the village, I no longer feel the ground beneath me as something separate from my body. It scrapes, itcatches, it burns, but it is all one thing now—pain threaded through every limb, every breath. My dress clings to me, heavy and wet, the white long gone beneath blood and dirt. The trap drags behind my leg with a dull, grinding weight, each movement sending another tearing through what remains of my foot.
Hands replace his at some point—I do not see whose. They pry me from Radu’s grip only to seize me themselves, arms under my shoulders, fingers digging into my wrists, my legs left to drag when they falter. My head lolls, hair tangled and damp, my throat raw from screaming.
The barn doors open, and I am thrown inside.
The impact knocks what little breath I have left from me. Straw rises around me in a dry rush, sticking to blood, to skin, to the open ruin of my leg where the iron still holds fast.
Voices move above me, urgent, fearful.
"She will call it—"
"Do not let her speak—"
Rough hands seize my arms, wrenching them behind my back. Rope bites into my wrists, pulled tight, tighter, until I feel the pulse there strain against it. Another strip of cloth is forced between my teeth, shoved deep, tied hard at the back of my head. I choke against it, breath catching, the taste of it thick and suffocating.
My legs are left as they are.
The trap remains.
