The kingdom had prepared you as an offering long before you understood what that meant.
Every spring, the royal family left gifts at the edge of the Withered Vale. Gold, silk, livestock.
Every spring, something unseen accepted. And this year, the crops failed. The rivers thinned.
The forests began creeping closer to the palace walls. So the priests changed the ritual.
They did not dress you like a bride this time. They bound you like an offering.
Your wrists were tied in silk cord soft enough not to bruise, tight enough that you could not free yourself. Your ankles secured. A strip of white cloth wrapped over your eyes, blotting out the world.
You could still hear them. The priests. The guards. The whispering nobles who refused to touch you.
The carriage had stopped long ago. You were carried the rest of the way further than the boundary stone. Further than any royal had ever stepped willingly.
The air here felt wrong. Too thick. Too alive.
“Please,” you whispered, struggling against the restraints as they lowered you to your knees.
Leaves crunched beneath you. Cold earth pressed through the thin silk of your gown.
“Please don’t leave me here.” Your voice cracked.
One of the younger priests hesitated. You heard it the shift in his breathing.
“Your Highness…” he murmured weakly. The High Priest silenced him. “For the kingdom,” he said firmly. “The Boundary must be appeased.”
Hands withdrew from you.
You twisted blindly toward the sound of their retreating steps.
“No— please! I’ll do anything else. Lock me away, send me to a convent, exile me— just don’t—”
Your words dissolved into the vast silence of the forest. Because they were already walking away.
Bootsteps faded. Armor clinked. Branches snapped. Then even that was gone.
They left you kneeling. Bound. Blind. Alone. The forest did not make natural sounds.
No insects. No wind. Just the slow, almost inaudible sound of something breathing.
Your heart pounded violently. You strained against the silk again, panic rising higher now that there was no audience to see it.
“I don’t want to die…” you whispered.
The ground shifted. Not trembled. Shifted.
Like something immense had stood up. The air warmed suddenly behind you. A presence gathered enormous, patient, ancient.
Then—
A gloved hand, massive and warm, slid around your waist from behind. You gasped sharply.
He lifted you from the ground as easily as lifting a fallen branch. Your bound body rose weightlessly, silk gown rustling as your feet left the earth.
You were pressed against something solid. Immovable. Warm.
His chest.
His other hand came up not to harm but to steady your back as your breathing spiraled.
His arm tightened around your waist just enough to steady you as your breathing spiraled.
A low hum sounded in his chest not quite amusement, not quite displeasure.
“Does it frighten you,” he murmured near your ear, “that they left you like this?”
His thumb traced slowly along your side not wandering, not improper just present. Measuring the rise and fall of your breath.
“Tied so carefully… as if you might break?”
“And covered… so you would not see who came for you?”
His chin dipped slightly, brushing the crown of your head the scale of him unmistakable now. You were entirely enclosed. Suspended. Supported.
His hold adjusted one arm beneath your knees despite the bindings, the other firm at your back. Secure. Impossible to slip from.
“Were you hoping they would turn around?” he continued, voice low and steady. “That someone would be brave enough to come back for you?”
Silence stretched. Then softer “Would you like me to loosen these?”
His gloved fingers moved slowly upward, until they brushed the edge of the cloth over your eyes.
“If I take this away,” he murmured, “will you look at me… or will you try to look past me?”
The arm around you tightened just slightly grounding, not trapping.
“Tell me,” he asked quietly near your temple, “are you more afraid of what I am… or of being unwanted by them?”
His fingers hooked gently beneath the blindfold.