The horse surges forward, sudden and sure.
The ground disappears beneath us, replaced by motion, by the rhythm of hooves striking earth, snow breaking under their force. The forest opens, then closes again around us, trees slipping past in dark streaks, branches reaching and retreating as we pass.
Snow falls thicker here.
It clings to my skin, to his hands, to the dark shape beneath us. The cold seeps into me, but it no longer feels like something to endure. It feels like distance. Like the world I am leaving slipping further away with each step.
His hand tightens slightly around me, anchoring me.
The wolves follow.
I do not see them always, but I feel them there, moving between the trees, their presence threading through the night like something ancient and unbroken. We ride through the forest, through the night, through something that feels older than both, the world shifting around us as though we no longer belong to it.
The mountains rise ahead, dark against a darker sky.
My head falls back slightly against him. My breath grows shallower, slower, each inhale a quiet effort. The world slackens around me again, slipping, loosening its hold.
I hear him still.
"Inima mea… stay… stay with me…"
His hand tightens slightly.
"Stay with me, Raveena…"
Chapter Six
Cold finds me first.
Not the cutting cold of snow, nor the biting wind of the night, but something deeper, older—the stillness of stone that has never known warmth. It presses against my back, my shoulders, the side of my face where I had been resting. I breathe, and the air tastes of wax and earth, thick and unmoving.
I open my eyes.
Darkness surrounds me, but it is not empty. It glows.
Dozens of candles burn in the crypt, their flames small and steady, scattered along the walls, at the base of carved niches, across ledges worn smooth by time. Their light trembles softly, gold against stone, chasing away the deepest shadows but leaving enough to keep the world half-hidden, half-dreamt.
I do not move at first.
The pain is there still, but it is… distant. Not gone. Never gone. It lingers beneath my skin, a memory rather than a wound, something that pulses faintly when I breathe too deeply, when I think too clearly. The sting has dulled, what remains is its echo.
Something moves across my skin. At first, I mistake it for shadow. Then it breathes, threading across my body in quiet, deliberate lines.
Roots, thin and pale, weave along my arms, across my ribs, over the broken place where my leg had been torn open. Leaves unfurl against my skin, soft and living, their veins pulsing faintly as though they draw something from me, or give something back. Mending.
A slow knitting, a quiet gathering. Bone drawing closer to bone. Skin remembering itself. The deep ache loosens where they pass, eased by something that hums faintly beneath the surface, older than any word I know.
I lift my hand, slowly, watching as a thin root curls away from it, retreating just enough to let me move. The skin there is no longer torn. It bears the mark of what was done, faint, shadowed, but whole. My fingers move, weakly brushing the surface beneath me, rough stone cool beneath my touch. I shift slightly, the motion small, careful, and the world tilts just enough for me to see where I lie.
Atomb.
The letters are worn, softened by time, but they remain.
Lucian III of—
The rest is gone. Eroded.
My fingertips trace the carving, searching for what is no longer there, the grooves shallow beneath my skin. I try to sound it out, to give it shape again, but the name refuses me.
