"I must," he murmurs, and the words barely survive his voice.
His fingers close around the iron. When he pulls, the world breaks open again.
Pain tears through me, fresh and blinding, dragging a shattered cry from somewhere deep inside me. My body convulses with it, my hands grasping blindly until they find him, clutching at his shoulders, his arms, anything solid.
"I know," he whispers, his voice low, steady, anchoring me through it. "I know… forgive me… forgive me…"
The metal gives, then it tears free. The wound opens again, blood spilling hot against the cold of the snow, the sensation too much, too vast to contain.
I gasp, but he is there. His hands hold me, his voice wraps around me, pulling me back from the edge each time I slip toward it.
"Look at me," he murmurs. "Stay with me, my love."
I try. Through the pain, through the dark that presses in, I hold onto his face, to the sound of him, the warmth of his tears against my skin.
His hands move with purpose now. I feel the pressure of them at my ankle, firm but careful, as he pulls away what remains of the iron’s hold, as he wraps cloth around what is left of my foot. The fabric tightens, binding, holding, his touch steady where everything else has been ruin. Myface rests against the snow, the cold seeping into my skin, numbing the places the fire had claimed. I let my eyes fall open.
The world has changed. At first, I think it is shadow.
Then they move.
Pairs of eyes catch the moonlight, scattered in the dark beyond him, low to the ground, unblinking. Yellow. Dozens of them. They circle at a distance, silent, their shapes barely visible between the trees.
Wolves.
For a moment I think they have come for me; the scent of blood is thick enough to call anything that hunts.
I wait for them to move closer. To advance. To claim what the fire has left behind.
They do not. They hold their ground, still and watchful, their gaze fixed not on me—but on everything around me. Guarding. Waiting. As though they answer to something unseen.
He lifts me again.
The motion is slow, careful, his arms slipping beneath me, drawing me close against his chest. I do not feel the weight of my own body as he rises, as he carries me as though I am something fragile, something to be kept intact despite all that has been done to me.
"I have you," he murmurs again, his voice close to my ear, low and certain despite the break that still lingers beneath it. "I will not let them take you. No one will take you from me."
Something moves in the dark.
A shape emerges between the trees, larger than the wolves, darker than the night itself. It steps forward without sound, its form resolving beneath the moon into something vast and wild—a horse, black as shadow, its breath rising in pale clouds against the cold.
It comes to him.
Stops.
Waits.
He carries me to it, his hands never loosening their hold, and lifts me once more, placing me gently across its back. The movement jars something deep inside me, a dull echo of pain, but it fades quickly, swallowed by the weightlessness that begins to take me again.
He climbs behind me.
"Stay with me," he whispers, his lips brushing faintly against my temple. "Just a little longer."
His body surrounds mine again, one arm securing me against him, the other steady on the animal.
"We are going home," he says.
The words settle into me like something promised long ago.
