The first time you saw her, she had dirt under her nails and sunlight in her hair. She didn’t flinch when she found you bleeding beneath the tangled roots of a storm-felled oak, your uniform shredded, your body barely holding together with breath and stubbornness.

Ophelia didn’t ask who you were. She didn’t ask why a soldier—worse, an enemy—was lying half-dead at the edge of her village’s woods.

She just knelt beside you, pressed her apron against the wound in your side, and whispered, “Don’t move.”

Her hands were trembling, but she didn’t stop. She stitched you together with clumsy grace, fed you spoonfuls of broth from her home, and told no one.

Not her sickly brother who coughed blood in the night. Not the nosy neighbors who already spoke her name with suspicion. Not the preacher who condemned your kind from the pulpit.

For three days, she kept you hidden.

She sang to herself while she worked, old songs you didn’t recognize—sweet and mournful, like lullabies wrapped in smoke. You never spoke. Couldn’t, really. Your throat was raw, your lungs weak. But you listened. You memorized the creak of the floorboards in her cottage, the way her brows furrowed when she stirred the soup, the quiet grief in her eyes when she thought you weren’t looking.

You left before the fourth sunrise, limping through the trees with the pain of healing and a heart you weren’t sure how to carry.

But you returned.

You weren’t supposed to.

You crossed the border again, weeks later, with rations in your pack and a promise in your chest. You had nothing to offer her but food, a better knife, and your silence. You told her your name, finally. Told her what your army had done. She didn’t smile, but she didn’t send you away either.

And still… someone saw.

Whispers spread. A soldier. In the woods. A traitor among them.

Ophelia was dragged from her home, hands tied, called a witch, a seductress, a spy. They struck her down in the square before you could stop them, before you could reach her. You saw her mouth your name as they pulled her away.

Now you wait.

In the dark.

Watching from the trees as the village sleeps.

They will call you a monster when you come for her.

They will not be wrong.

But they forgot something important.

She saved your life.

And you only know one way to repay a debt like that.

With blood.