I drift, in and out, the world fading, returning, fading again. At some point, something cold touches me. Soft. It melts against what remains of my skin, slipping into the heat, easing it for a moment before it is gone. Then another. And another.
Snow.
It falls lightly, catching in the feathers, slipping through to reach me in scattered touches. Each one stings, then soothes, a brief mercy that does not last. I breathe it in without meaning to, the cold cutting through the smoke still lodged inside me.
The light fades slowly, the sky darkening beyond the wings that still guard me. The world grows quieter, the village distant now, as though it has stepped away from what it has done.
Then—
Darkness deepens. The moon rises, and something shifts.
The ravens stir all at once.
A ripple passes through them, a sudden awareness, and then they lift, one by one, then in clusters, then all together. Wings beat against the air, a rush of sound that fills the space as they rise from me, leaving the stake, the ground, the ruined shape of my body exposed once more.
Cold air crashes over me. I gasp, or try to.
"Raveena."
The sound of my name shudders through the night, fractured, desperate. It reaches me like something remembered, like a dream breaking through the dark.
"Raveena—"
His voice.
I try to turn my head. I do not know if I succeed. The world blurs, steadies, blurs again, but then he is there, his shadow falling over me, his presence filling the space the fire had left empty. He falls to his knees beside me, his hands already reaching, trembling as they hover over me, afraid to touch yet unable not to.
"What have they done to you…" The words fracture as they leave him. His voice gives way beneath them, breaks open entirely. Tears fall freely down his face, unhidden, unrestrained, slipping from his eyes and striking my skin, warm against what remains of me.
"My angel… my love…"
He is weeping.
It shakes through him, through the way he breathes, through the way his hands move over me as if trying to find something that can be undone.
His voice is no longer the one I have once known. It is torn open, stripped bare, every word pulled from somewhere too deep to survive it.
"Pardon me," he whispers, his forehead nearly touching mine. "I could not come sooner. I could only send them… I could only send them to you."
He moves then, deliberate despite the tremor in him, his hands working at the rope that binds me. The tension loosens from my wrists, from my arms, and when the last of it falls away, I collapse forward without strength to hold myself.
He catches me at once. Lifts me. Holds me close in his arms, gathering what remains of me against his chest as though I am something precious still, something whole.
"Sunt aici… inima mea[30]," he murmurs against my hair, against my skin, his voice trembling with something deeper than grief. "I am here."
Itry to speak. My lips part, but my breath falters. The words dissolve before they can take shape.
I see his face. Or pieces of it. The line of his jaw. The darkness of his eyes. The way they hold me as though nothing else exists. His mouth moves, words spilling out, soft, desperate, but I catch only fragments, pieces that slip through me like water.
"…my angel…"
"…forgive me…"
"…I have you…"
He lowers me gently to the ground. Snow cushions me, cold against my ruined skin, yet softer than anything I have felt in hours. His hands remain on me, never leaving, tracing, holding, as though to anchor me here, to keep me from slipping somewhere he cannot follow.
His hands move to my broken leg, and I feel his hesitation there, the grief that tightens his touch.
