Is misery inevitable? I know I am not immune, any more than the beggar who freezes to the ground or the man who dies of a consuming illness. Why do we always hope it can be better when we know the likely results?

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  “Just go!” Dragos barked, swiping a clawed hand at her.

  A few more soldiers and a farmer scrambled out of the ravine. Lavinia didn’t look at them. She looked at Dragos and shouted back, “No. You run!”

  With a last, simmering look of frustration at her, Dragos faced the men and charged.

  It wasn’t a fight he could win; he knew that, but something in his chest squeezed to imagine just letting them take her. Not after he’d found her, not after he’d lost everything else.

  His black hood flew back. The purple scarf was still tucked in his robes.White hair blew free. Fingers clamped around the braces in his gloves. He rushed the knight who had ordered their surrender.

  A sickly amusement rose from the raging din of panic as the swordsman swung while backing up with a scampering gait, as if he hadn’t expected the witch to resist. Dragos swatted the blade wide with the back of his hand. Struck viper-fast, iron claws caught in leather.

  Lips peeled back, Dragos pushed, slashing at the inside of the man’s arm. A cornered animal is ferocious. He was merciless.

  The two fell into the group still climbing up, the knight tripping on a twisted root.

  Dragos lunged, felt the bite of the poorly swung blade as the man fell. Hot blood spilled, parted flesh shrieked, but there was no stopping now.

  The hunters swarmed upward.

  One of the farmers from Fantana Rece got an arm around his, pinning a claw. Dragos pivoted, but another man slipped around, tangling his other arm.

  One twisted, and Dragos dropped to a knee to avoid his shoulder popping out of its socket. He hissed through bared teeth, a wordless snarl. Peering up through his tangled hair, he rumbled a wolf’s threat deep in his chest as the posse surrounded him.

  Lavinia’s shriek made his blood go from molten to ice.

  From his crouched position, he looked up, around, until he spotted the bald monk. He commanded the Luminar, “Let her go! She did nothing wrong!”

  “We will see,” the monk murmured, hands in his robes, eyes slitted nearly closed, face as impassive as stone.

  Dragos tugged, but the two farmers clamped tighter. Young men, built from hard work and casual brawling.

  One of them tugged viciously on Dragos's twisted arm. “Take that, striga! Give back that little boy’s life you took!”

  Dragos grunted, turning with the pull, muscles wailing for relief. Slowly, he lifted his head to fix the boy with a rage-filled gaze.

  “You’d better never let go of me, now,” he whispered, the bitterest of promises.

  He’d never wanted to curse someone. Not until that moment. The idea of dark magic, blestem, flitted through his ire-laced brain. He knew no such spell, or he’d have whispered it right then.

  The man’s earth-brown eyes trembled in their sockets. He sucked in a breath and held on. But the grip loosened imperceptibly. Dragos felt the tremor of suddenly unsteady hands.

  Before he could take advantage, a dozen more hands grabbed him. They thrust him face-first to the ground. Dragos's cheek hit stone and root and split with a bright burst of pain that made his eyes swim.

  He thought he’d felt panic before. This was a fresh, new, terrible panic that had no words to describe it.

  Someone’s foot ground into his spine. Another stomped on his wrist and crouched to unbuckle his claw. His fingers clamped tighter around it, but the pressure on his wrist numbed them.

  Little by little, they took his weapons from him. They cut his box straps and took that. His hunting knife, found and stolen by groping hands. The rope used to carry Lavinia’s things was used to bind his arms behind his back.

  Her belongings were strewn over the ancient leaves.

  All the while, he heard her struggle. She spat. She kicked. She swore, cursing the men and the Light itself. He heard a man grunt in the scuffle.

  The sick feeling in his soul negated the smile that wanted to mock them as they put a defenseless, handless woman on the ground and bound her, kneeling, with her forehead to the dirt.

  A red haze spilled into his vision. He closed the offending eye, the one close to the rock that ground against his cheekbone, and lay still. Waiting for what might come next.

  He willed it to be Zgavra.

  The sky carried no shade. No shadow crossed over the clouds. The sun’s last beams slipped away without the zmeu’s presence to darken it.

  “Check her for witch marks.” The Luminar’s voice piped, serene as waveless waters.

  Dragos's eyeballs rolled in their sockets, one unnaturally slickened by blood. He couldn’t see. Though he didn’t want to witness any of it, he desperately squirmed under the weight of four men while trying to.

  Fabric tore. Lavinia’s scream tore through the woods, more angry than horrified. Someone yelped. He couldn’t see, but he imagined she bit whoever it was. A crack of skin on skin followed.

  A low snarling was coming from somewhere.

  He only noticed because it got louder—and then realized it was him. His chest rattled, crushed into dirt and root, growling like a caged animal.

  “She has the mark,” the Luminar said with a solemn tone.

  The serpent’s tattoo, bared by their mauling, no doubt. He’d never seen it, but she was from ?oloman??. Of course she had it.

  The boy who twisted his arm with the glint of a sadist in his cerulean eye let go of Dragos to hurry over, scooping up a woodcutter’s axe from where someone had dropped it. He left Dragos's field of vision and asked with a disgusting eagerness, “We cut her head off, right? Nerostit? die only when you cut off their heads.”

  “No, that’s how you make a real striga, labagiu!” Dragos barked, straining to free himself. A boot swam into focus right before he felt the impact. His vision swam again, cheek scraped along the root and off it.

  “Futu-?i pa?tele ?i dumnezeii! Dumnezeul m?-tii ast?zi ?i maine de nenorocit!” Lavinia swore, the cursing nothing more than a rude string of words.

  It seemed that she, too, had never learned blestem, for surely she would have hexed them all, instead of insulting their mothers and their gods.

  “Are you so eager to kill this woman?” The Luminar asked. His smooth voice grated Dragos’s nerves.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Well,” the man hedged. “She’s a danger to everyone. We should behead them both. That one’s got Umbre in him. I mean, can’t you see it? Evil.”

  Dragos tasted dirt and blood as they mingled on his lips. He spat, and he listened. The farmhand, he was the evil one. Blood hungry, delighted to bring pain. It was easy to see.

  “Not this one,” a voice from directly above him said. The authoritative knight. It was his boot in Dragos's back.

  Blood dripped from the wound on his arm. Droplets splashed beside him, wetting the lacy leaves. Dragos wished he’d hit more than muscle and skin with his talons.

  “Why not?” The would-be murderer asked, the faintest tinge of disappointment in his voice.

  “That isn’t your business. It’s mine.”

  “Well, what about this one, then?”

  Pressure on Dragos's back increased as the cavaler shifted, digging the ball of his foot between the prone man’s shoulderblades. “I couldn’t care less. Take her head off. One less fugitive to escort through this forest. Be quick about it, then light some torches.”

  Dragos barely had space to inhale, much less protest.

  Lavinia’s high-pitched snarl rose, cut off by more scuffling.

  The thunk of a blade stilled his heart. Can one die without dying? It felt like it happened. Something died in him.

  He flinched at the gurgling she made and the subsequent whacks. It took that worm three strikes to cut through her slender neck.

  From the corner of his blurred vision, Dragos saw the farmer lifting her head by her hair. Like a trophy.

  The albstrig? spoke, bloody lips peeling back into a rictus grin, wishing his glare could tear a hole through the idiot murderer. “I told you not to let go of me. You’ll regret it.”

  He didn’t see the expression on the fool’s face. Didn’t need to. One day, he’d make that vague prophecy come true. He’d never forget the farmer’s bright blue eyes or that twisted smile.

  Hands had his arms, yanked at his elbows, threw him upright, and he fell over. His legs refused to work. They tried again, this time holding him up. The pushy knight barked, “Walk!”

  It was more of a drag, punctuated by punishment for his lack of engagement. Fists drove into his gut, a knight swatted the back of his head with the flat of his blade. A kick to his backside pitched him forward again, thrown out of his captor’s hands and into a cushion of bramble. No part of him went unscathed. The endless agony dulled him, not in a physical way; it still hurt beyond anything he’d known before.

  Dragos couldn’t bother to care. He was broken. Done.

  Pain was pain, and more pain.

  It didn’t matter.

  The other witch hunters caught up to them, and again, the knight asserted a right to him. The groups gathered together, set a few fires beneath the ancient canopy, and bivouacked. Dragos barely recognized any of it.

  He’d been pushed, thrown, and kicked along until he hit a tree. Instead of hauling him up to continue walking, they pinned him to it long enough to tether the ropes that bound his arms. The men walked away towards one of the fires that wavered in his darkened vision.

  The cool bark behind him felt amazing, and the cold earth’s embrace welcomed his radiant heat. His skull felt cracked open. He was deliriously half-sure his brains had leaked out some time ago.

  Stillness settled into him. Just inside the firelight, he could see their figures. Hear their boasting. Their laughter.

  After a while, he felt it again.

  Life, in the form of utter hatred. Despite the raging bulls in his head, he listened. Caught names and places in the snippets of conversation. Watched as wounds were bounds. Stared dispassonately back at them as they cast curses his way.

  Their damning ends. All of it. He’d never forget.

  The cavaler would not explain himself, though many asked why they couldn’t butcher Dragos right there in the forest. Justice, they claimed. The man only stared at them, not repeating himself. Resentment boiled in their voices.

  A grim smile graced Dragos's swollen lips. The Suta? would have to sleep surrounded by his men, for the farmer’s anger. For himself, he knew he wouldn’t sleep. One of the farmers, possibly more, would try to murder him, sure as the sun rose in the east.

  His head rocked to the pounding within, beating against the cragged bark that held him up. He closed his throbbing eyes and tried not to relive the day. A rustle of leaves made him struggle to open them. Blood scabbed one shut.

  A figure swam against the orange glow behind it. One of the knights sat across from him, legs crossed. Bronze and leather caught the light, but his vision blurred over the rest of the man.

  “Why?” Dragos croaked.

  “Why did we chase you, or why did we save you?”

  By the voice, it wasn’t the caveler in charge. A younger man, perhaps his own age, though Dragos couldn’t fathom what age even was anymore. It meant gray hair and trembling joints. The rest? A life lived with humble awareness dictated wisdom.

  Life happened, until one died of starvation, cold, or violence.

  “Second.” His tongue felt like a dried hunk of jerky, the only thing containing the desert in his throat.

  “Someone wants to speak with you, before you die,” the young knight said. He shifted, as if uncomfortable, whether it was due to being near the albstrig?, the conversation, or a rock jabbing his backside. It was impossible to tell.

  Dragos licked the split across his lower lip and grunted. He rasped, not a question, but a statement. “Someone powerful.”

  He had some ideas as to who and why.

  “Do you want water?”

  A desiccated chuckle burst from Dragos, regretfully jarring but honest. “Yes.”

  The man fumbled with something. Dragos blinked his one open eye, and something was held to his lips. The knight’s speed surprised him, dismayed him, told him how badly off he was. However, when the perfection of cool water touched the crackling dust of his mouth, his whole body shivered. It trickled down his throat, and his being instantly responded.

  The hatred that had solidified into crumbling pebbles liquified and became molten once again, tempered and awakened by the kindness of one of his enemies. A Cavaler de Lumina, perhaps actually worthy of the founding knight’s reputation. When the young man pulled back, he stayed where he was, crouched beside Dragos.

  “It is dishonorable to refuse you things like water,” the knight murmured.

  “Life doesn’t reward honor, Cavaler,” Dragos murmured, his one good eye fixed on the man. “Still. Thank you for it.”

  The knight nodded and backed up to sit cross-legged again.

  Dragos rested against the tree. The knight was there to guard him. If the throbbing in his head didn’t kill him, he’d likely live to see the sun rise—and whatever else it brought.

  He did not sleep, but a restless flow of consciousness stirred his aching soul. The rough bark at his back was enough; the dirt and grasses beneath him held him up, though parts of him felt like they sank beneath the roots and kept slipping.

  Some shreds of his awareness slid downwards, into the space unmolested by time and matter, where the twin rivers flowed and spawned their tributaries. Cel?lalt t?ram, the other realm, beyond the veil, where the Unspoken spawned.

  Blackest black and brightest bright, they branched and rumbled, giving life into the void space. And, in that space, he could see more. Deep within the world, a great network of rivers flowed, and it looked so much like a map of arteries and veins that his psyche trembled to think of what it meant.

  “Zgavra,” he said without speaking, his own voice the whisper of a bird’s feathers to the bass roar of the rivers that thrummed through his soul.

  The good eye snapped open. A beam of sunlight slanted into his face through a gap between trees. His heart thudded in his chest, as if it had forgotten to beat for too long, and rushed to resume its rhythms again. His head also resumed its clamoring, his flesh its wailing. On top of that, he had to urinate.

  A knight came around the tree beside him. Not the one from before, with a solemn innocence about him. This one felt like… zmeu.

  A cold anger settled in as Dragos peered at the plain-faced man wearing a cavaler’s armor. His upper lip curled, a split cracking open at the motion. Blood dampened his tongue as he spat at the fake knight’s feet.

  “It’s me,” Zgavra murmured.

  “I know,” Dragos responded, still sneering. “Lavinia is dead.”

  “Shame,” it replied, bending to the tether that connected Dragos's bonds to the tree.

  “Don’t bother,” he growled at it.

  The knight rocked back on his heels and looked at him like he was an idiot.

  That just turned the anger within into a conflagration.

  “I’m not going to vanish.”

  Dragos had more words. So many more words, but his voice crumbled, cracked. The rawness in his soul sang as loudly as the shallow cut from a sword on his arm, the earthquake in his head, and the bruises that went to his brittle bones.

  “What if they kill you before you come up with a better escape? Don’t be stupid.”

  Dragos fixed the monster in a soldier’s guise with a look as chill as mountain winds. The churlishness in his own voice tasted disgusting, but he didn’t hold his words back this time. “Then I die. Leave me to my fate, zmeu. It’s what you’re most adept at.”

  The soldier threw up his hands, glanced at the sleeping figures on the ground by the smoldering coals in the firepit and huffed.

  “Have it your way.”

  Zgavra turned to smoke and dissipated. Dragos was alone again.

  Luminatori (loo-min-ah-TOR-ee): Monk of the Light

  Striga (STREE-guh): Witch, undead, being with supernatural power

  Zmeu (zmyeh-oo): kind of Romanian dragon, shapeshifter

  Blestem (BLESS-tem): Hex, curse, black magic

  ?oloman?? (Shoh-loh-MAHN-tsuh): School led by Solomonari taught blood magic and magic.

  Nerostit?: Unspoken. Anything supernatural or unexplainable.

  Labagiu: Er. In polite terms, a wanker.

  Futu-?i pa?tele ?i dumnezeii! Dumnezeul m?-tii ast?zi ?i maine de nenorocit: A curse on mothers and beliefs. Regular swearing, non-magical.

  Albstrig?: White witch. Barn owl. A pale ghost or evil spirit.

  Suta?: Professional officer from Cavalarul de Lumina

  Caveler: One of the Cavalarul de Lumina, which should never be said in English, because then it just sounds dumb.