I don't wake up so much as drift back into awareness. The storm has passed. The forest is strangely quiet, bathed in the gentle, silver light of predawn. The only sound is the soft drip, drip, drip of water from the glistening leaves above. My first thought is a profound, almost philosophical sense of confusion. I'm not dead.
The second is a jolt of pure shock. The fire in my cheek, the relentless, agonizing pyre that has been the center of my universe for days, is gone. It hasn't faded to a dull ache; it has vanished. In its place is a strange, cool numbness, like a fresh balm has been smoothed over the wound.
I sit up, slowly. My limbs are weak and shaky, my muscles still screaming from days of abuse, but the soul-deep exhaustion has lifted. The fever that fogged my mind and tried to cook me from the inside out has broken. I feel… clear. My sodden dress clings to me, cold and heavy, a miserable second skin, but even the bone-deep chill has receded.
The strange, internal silver light from the night before is gone. I raise a trembling hand to my face, my fingers tentatively probing the scar. The skin is no longer puffy and hot with infection. It's smooth and cool to the touch. The jagged ridges are still there, a permanent testament to Damien's cruelty, but it feels like an old scar now, not a raw, open wound. It feels… dormant.
What happened? The moonlight… that impossible warmth. Did I dream it? A final, beautiful hallucination before the end? It seems more likely than any miracle. Miracles aren't for girls like me.
But something is different. I can feel it. A subtle hum just beneath my skin, a quiet thrumming of energy that wasn't there before. It feels like a new sense has awakened, like being able to hear a frequency of sound that was previously beyond my range. It's a faint pull, a gentle but insistent nudge in a specific direction. It feels less like a thought and more like an instinct, a magnetic north I am suddenly compelled to follow.
Curiosity, a feeling I thought had been beaten out of me, stirs to life. With my legs still unsteady, I push myself up, using the gnarled oak as a support. Taking a deep breath, I decide to trust this new, strange feeling. It's not like I have any other destination.
I stumble through the dripping, silent woods, following the invisible thread. It leads me deeper into the forest, away from anything that feels familiar. The trees here are older, their branches thick with moss, their trunks forming a dense, almost unbroken wall. The air grows still, heavy with the scent of damp earth and something else—something wild and faintly floral, like night-blooming jasmine.
The pull gets stronger, and I hear a sound. A soft, distressed whimpering, followed by the sharp, metallic clink of a chain. It's a sound I know all too well: the sound of a creature trapped.
I push past a curtain of hanging moss and step into a small, secluded clearing. My breath catches in my throat. In the center of the clearing is a creature so beautiful it doesn't seem real. It's a fox, but unlike any fox I've ever seen or heard of. Its fur is the color of spun starlight, a brilliant, luminous white that seems to gather and hold the faint morning light. Its tail is a magnificent plume, tipped with silver, and its eyes are two deep, intelligent pools of liquid sapphire. A Moon-Fox. I've only ever seen them in the oldest tapestries in the Great Hall, mythical creatures said to be the companions of the Goddess herself.
My awe is quickly replaced by a pang of sharp pain—not my own, but a reflection of its suffering. The creature's front leg is caught in a cruel, primitive-looking trap. The jaws are made of dark, rusted iron, a dead metal known to burn both shifter and fae creatures alike, cutting them off from their natural magic and strength. A heavy iron chain, bolted to the trap, is wrapped around the base of a tree, holding the magnificent creature fast.
The Moon-Fox thrashes when it sees me, its sapphire eyes wide with terror and aggression. It lets out a hostile hiss, its lips peeling back to reveal a set of sharp, needle-like teeth. It pulls against the trap, and I can see fresh blood welling up around the rusted iron jaws, staining its perfect, starlight fur a sickening crimson.
My heart clenches. I see myself in its wild, panicked eyes. Trapped. Wounded. Alone. Left to die by a cruelty it cannot comprehend. Everything in me, every instinct I have ever had, screams at me to run. This is a wild, magical thing, and a cornered animal is dangerous. The rational part of my brain tells me there's nothing I can do. I don't have the strength to pry open the iron jaws of the trap.
But the girl who thinks rationally, who acts out of self-preservation, is being drowned out by this new, humming instinct inside me. That strange empathy I feel for it—that shared sense of being unjustly ensnared—overwhelms my fear. I know what it feels like to be caught in a trap not of your own making.
"I'm not going to hurt you," I whisper, my voice soft, though I know it can't understand the words. I hold out my empty hands, showing I have no weapon.
It continues to snarl, pulling frantically at the chain, its leg tearing further on the serrated iron. The sight of its self-inflicted agony decides it for me. I cannot walk away. Leaving it here to die would be a betrayal of my own survival.
Slowly, one shuffling step at a time, I move closer. My heart pounds a heavy rhythm against my ribs. The fox's hisses grow louder, more desperate. It lunges, its teeth snapping in the air, but the chain holds it just short of reaching me. I am now close enough to smell its fear, a sharp, musky scent that mingles with the smell of its blood.
My gaze is fixed on the trap, on the ugly, corroded iron that holds this beautiful thing captive. Our elders taught us that iron is a dead thing, anathema to life and magic. It saps strength. It creates a void where power used to be. Just touching it is supposed to be painful for any being with a trace of magic in its veins. Damien called me a void. Flawed. Empty. Maybe iron is the only thing I can touch.
I kneel in the mud before the terrified creature, my own pain forgotten. "It's okay," I murmur, more to myself than to the fox. "It's okay."
I reach out a trembling hand. The fox flinches violently, preparing to bite. But I don't try to touch its wounded leg. I don't try to touch its fur. My focus is entirely on that ugly, dead piece of metal.
A strange warmth begins to build in my palm. The humming beneath my skin intensifies. I can almost see it now, a faint, silvery light gathering in my fingertips, the same ethereal glow from the moonlight in the storm.
I ignore the panicked animal and place my hand directly on the cold, rusty iron of the trap. The moment my skin makes contact, the iron hisses like water on a hot stone and begins to visibly corrode and decay.