The hut was small—a hollowed-out stone lung that smelled of woodsmoke, damp wool, and the bitter tang of drying roots. It was a space built for a ghost, barely large enough to contain her own solitude, let alone the sprawling, bleeding reality of a man.
Getting him here had been an act of punishment.
Seraphine had dragged him nearly a mile on a sled made of raw deer hide and braided vines. Her muscles, once sculpted for nothing heavier than a silk fan, were now burning cords of tension. Every heave, every slip of her boots in the mud, had been a reminder of the distance between the girl she was and the creature she had become.
With a final, guttural grunt of exertion, she hoisted him onto her narrow cot. The frame groaned under his weight.
She collapsed back against the wall, chest heaving, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her glove.
Up close, the intruder was even more dangerous.
Even in the flickering light of the hearth, it was obvious he didn't belong here. He was undeniably handsome, with high cheekbones and a sharp jawline that looked too perfect for a commoner. He looked like the portraits she used to see in the palace—only he was warm, breathing, and bleeding all over her only clean linen.
Work, she commanded herself. Don't look at his face. Look at the wound.
Seraphine moved with the frantic efficiency of someone who knew that death was always waiting in the corner of the room. She grabbed a small, sharp knife—a blade she had ground down from a discarded horseshoe—and leaned over him.
The heavy charcoal wool of his tunic resisted the blade for a moment before parting.
Rip.
She peeled the fabric back.
His chest was broad, rising and falling in shallow, pained hitches. A jagged gash ran along his ribs, weeping dark red.
Seraphine's breath hitched. In her old life, the sight of this much blood would have made her faint. Now, she didn't see horror. She saw a problem. She saw a puzzle of flesh that needed to be stitched before the fever set in.
She dipped a rag into a wooden bowl of warm water infused with yarrow and silver-leaf.
Don't touch him with your skin, she thought, panic flaring. Keep the gloves on.
She scrubbed the dirt from the wound, the rough leather of her gloves awkward and clumsy against his skin. As the water turned pink, the man let out a low, guttural groan.
His lashes fluttered. The amber eyes opened again, hazy with pain, reflecting the firelight like polished sap.
"Still... here," he rasped, the sound wet and weak.
"I told you to be quiet," Seraphine whispered. Her voice felt strange in her throat—rusty, unused, yet instinctively falling into the polite, commanding tone of a noble. She kept her hood pulled low, her long chestnut hair acting as a secondary veil between them. "Your ribs are broken. If you keep talking, you'll puncture a lung."
She slid a hand behind his neck to lift him. His head was heavy, his hair soft against her leather palm. She held a cup of willow-bark tea to his lips.
"Drink."
He drank greedily, some of the dark liquid escaping the corner of his mouth. But his gaze never left her. He was looking at her—really looking—squinting against the pain to pierce through the shadows of her hood.
"You speak..." he murmured, his voice trailing off into a delirious haze, "...like a lady of the court."
Seraphine froze.
The cup nearly slipped from her hand.
For a terrifying heartbeat, the air in the hut vanished. Had he heard it? The polished accent of the capital? The education that two years of silence hadn't been able to kill?
Does he know?
She pulled her hand away as if burned. Her heart hammered against the black rose on her collarbone. She could feel the mark pulsing, a dull, rhythmic heat radiating through her neck, reacting to her fear.
"A ghost is all I am," she said, her voice turning icy. "Sleep. Tomorrow, the forest will claim you again if you aren't strong enough to leave."
The man's eyes drifted shut, the willow-bark dragging him down into the dark.
"A ghost..." he breathed, a faint smile ghosting his lips. "You're too warm... to be a ghost."
His breathing leveled out. He was asleep.
Seraphine retreated to the furthest corner of the hut, sinking into her wooden chair. She clutched her skinning knife in her lap, her knuckles white beneath her gloves.
She watched the firelight dance across his face. He was a high noble—she was certain of it. He was a piece of the world that had rejected her, lying helpless in her bed.
He was the most dangerous thing she had ever encountered in the Forbidden Forest. Not because he could kill her—she knew the woods better than he ever would.
He was dangerous because he made her want to remember what it felt like to be Seraphine of House Aurelian again.
As the stranger's breathing finally leveled into a deep, healing sleep, Seraphine looked at her gloved hands. For two years, she had been content to be a shadow. But as the fire died down, she felt a terrifying, long-forgotten spark of hope.
He thinks I'm a spirit, she thought, a bitter smile touching her lips. Let him keep his dream. Because once the sun rises, he will see the marks. And then, he will realize he was saved by a nightmare.