Chapter 4: Chapter 3 - Survive, That is Enough

The fire had died in the night.

Only a faint gray smear of ash clung to the stone ring, whispering of warmth I hadn’t held onto. Frost laced the edges, delicate as spider silk, mocking in its beauty. The air was sharper without the flames, each breath biting as it scraped my throat. My lungs steamed ghosts into the dawn, but even they looked too thin, too fragile, as though they might break apart and vanish before I could draw the next one.

Hunger gnawed hollow in my belly. That first rabbit—pitiful, miraculous—was already days behind me, its bones long picked clean, its memory sour on my tongue. Since then, the snares had been empty. Always empty. Always failure.

I ached when I moved. Every joint cracked like dry wood splitting, every muscle stiff with cold. My cloak clung damp to my shoulders, smelling of smoke and mildew. I gathered it tight anyway, a poor disguise for the shiver rattling my ribs.

The forest loomed quiet. Branches sagged heavy with frost, tips sharp as needles. The undergrowth was brittle, leaves curling into claws where snow hadn’t claimed them. Ravens shifted above me, black wings against the pale sky, watching without interest. Everything in this place endured without pity, without pause, and it seemed to ask if I could do the same.

“Maybe today,” I rasped, though no one heard.

I turned toward the tree-line, toward the traps I had set with hands clumsy from cold and desperation. My boots crunched in the frost-crusted dirt. My breath hissed shallow. I counted the paces because it was easier than thinking of how badly I needed those snares to hold something—anything—before the hollow inside me grew too wide to fill.

The ground betrayed me.

One heartbeat I was forcing myself forward, whispering numbers to keep the hunger quiet, and the next I was pitched into the dirt.

My boot snagged on a root slick with ice. I lurched, flailed, and went down hard—knees slamming stone, shoulder wrenching, cheek cracking against frozen earth. The sound of it split the clearing, sharp and shameful, and the cry that tore from me was raw, startled, ugly.

For a moment I stayed there, stunned. Cold pressed into my cheek. Copper filled my mouth. My chest stuttered, desperate for air.

And the silence closed in.

It dragged me backward, down the stairwell of memory—my child-self in a too-long gown, lace collar blooming with blood, knees split on stone. Lying at the bottom of the steps, waiting for help. Waiting for the door to open. For someone to come.

But no one did.

No one ever did.

I had stayed quiet then, small and still, because silence was the only thing the world allowed me. The only thing I thought might earn me kindness.

Now—

I pushed up on shaking arms, scraped my palms raw against the dirt. Anger flooded fast, hot enough to burn through hunger. I clawed at the ground until soil bled beneath my nails, then kicked at the roots that had caught me, scattering rocks into the trees.

“Damn you!” I shouted, my voice cracking, raw with disuse. Louder still: “Damn all of you!”

I staggered upright, trembling from more than cold. My knees burned where stone had bitten through skin, blood seeping warm beneath the frost. I should have limped on, quiet as always, but something in me had cracked open with the fall, and fury poured out faster than I could swallow it down.

I kicked again, harder, scattering ice and pebbles across the path. My throat burned with the rasp of words I had never dared speak aloud.

“All of you,” I hissed at the trees, my voice rough. “Father. Court. Every silk-draped viper that smiled while they shoved me aside.” My shout ripped loose, raw and jagged: “Every single one of you!”

And the forest did not swallow it.

The sound went bounding through the trees, sharp against bark, echoing down into hollows, flung wide and far as though the woods themselves wanted to hurl my fury back into the world.

It startled me. I wasn’t used to being heard, even by the air. At court, my words had been dampened, smothered, turned to silence by sneers and scolding looks. Here, they broke free, carried long past me, and no one rushed to hush them.

“I stayed,” I spat, teeth clenched, breath steaming like fire. “I stayed and I bent myself smaller, quieter, thinking maybe one day it would be enough. That I would be enough.” My fists curled, dirt grinding into split palms. “And it never was. It never would have been.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I kicked until my legs shook. Screamed until my throat split, rusty from disuse. Curses poured out of me, wild and ugly, each one flung back at me by the forest’s echo.

And still the woods endured, indifferent, letting me rage until I was hollow, until the fury had burned hot enough to chase back the cold for one fleeting moment.

_______________

The sound caught him first.

A heavy thud, followed by the rasp of air forced from lungs — prey-noise, graceless and loud.

He stopped mid-step, muscles stiffening, ears flicking back. He had been on the trail of deer, breath clean with the hunt. Now the rhythm was ruined, the woods shivered with the clatter of her fall, and irritation flared sharp behind his teeth.

Her again.

The scent was already familiar — human musk, damp wool, smoke clinging sour to her skin, the thin edge of hunger seeping from her pores. Last night she had only been odd: a strange creature curled by a pitiful fire, neither prey nor threat, strange enough to glance at and then leave behind.

But today she was different. Today she was inconvenient. Obvious. Wasteful. Loud where silence should rule. The stench of her had clung to his trees, souring the ground, chasing cleaner game from the paths he ran.

He huffed, low and sharp, and turned off his trail. Not out of care. Out of frustration. A thought had already begun to coil behind his irritation: perhaps he should drive her away. Push her from his den-routes before she frightened off more of what mattered.

Through the branches he crouched low and watched, amber eyes narrowed.

She was sprawled in the frost, cheek scraped, knees bloodied. He waited for what he expected — for her to cry, to whimper, to nurse her wounds like the soft creatures always did. It would have satisfied him to be proven right, to see her weakness and know she would not stay.

But she didn’t.

Instead she shoved herself upright, clawing at the dirt with raw hands, scattering stones with her boots. And then she screamed — cracked and rusty, wild enough to send birds tearing from the branches. The sound carried sharp between trunks, ringing far beyond her camp, echoing down his hunting trails.

He rolled his shoulders in disgust, jaw tight. Noise like that did not belong here. It startled game. It spoiled the wood.

And yet—

She didn’t cry. She didn’t cower. She stood ragged and furious, as though daring the silence itself to answer her.

His head tilted despite himself.

He lingered longer than he meant to, crouched among the trees, breath low and even. He told himself it was annoyance that kept him there, nothing more. She was noisy, clumsy, disruptive. Her scent fouled his hunting grounds, her shouting startled everything with sense into the hills. If she kept at it, his trails would run empty.

She should leave.

He wanted her gone.

He even imagined it—looming close, snapping teeth, driving her stumbling back across the border. That would be cleaner. Easier.

But she didn’t leave. She wiped her face on her rag of a cloak, straightened, and limped onward.

He almost snorted at the stubbornness of it. Still moving, still pressing deeper, still putting her scent where it didn’t belong. If she were prey, she’d have fled at the first pain. If she were wise, she’d have turned back to her stone walls and soft beds. But she did neither.

He tracked her with his eyes as she reached her snares. The first: empty. The second: sprung, useless. He felt satisfaction twitch in his chest. Proof she would starve soon enough. Proof she did not belong here.

Then the third.

The cord pulled taut around a kicking shape. A rabbit, plump, fighting weakly.

She dropped to her knees with a sound he could not name. Not laughter. Not relief. Something in between, shaking in her chest. Her hands trembled as she reached for it, reverent, as though it were treasure.

He narrowed his eyes. A small, bitter catch. But a catch nonetheless.

His lips curled back, a huff slipping free. Annoyance still burned in him — at her noise, at her scent, at her intrusion — but beneath it, another thought prickled unwanted:

Small. But hers. Well done.

Her smell carried strange in the cold air — human, yes, but touched with something else. Familiar, though he could not place it. Wrong and known in the same breath.

He rolled his shoulders and turned from the sight, irritation still heavy in his jaw. She was nothing but disruption. A stray thing. A trespasser who should have broken already.

And yet—

She was still here.

Still alive.

And the thought crept unwelcome:

Does she mean to stay?

______________

I carried the rabbit back to my fire pit and set to work. My hands were clumsy from cold, the knife dull, but I skinned it anyway, splitting the flesh rough and uneven. The smell of iron clung sharp to my fingers.

I coaxed the fire alive with splinters and breath, fed it until the flames caught, and laid the meat across a stick. It burned black in places, stayed raw in others, but I didn’t care.

I ate too fast at first, tearing hot flesh with my teeth, grease stinging my tongue. Then I forced myself slower, chewing carefully, letting myself taste it.

It was bitter. Tough. Burnt. But it was mine.

Better than the feasts at the castle where I was dressed like a ghost to be ignored. Better than the sweetmeats Lucen once pressed on me with his false smile. Better than every scrap I had begged from servants who wouldn’t look me in the eye.

This meal was clumsy, ugly, but it was earned. And that made it sweeter than all the rest.