Your heart beats — too strong, too fast. Each throb feels like it’s trying to escape your chest, tearing you apart from the inside. Your legs ache, your steps falter, and the snow beneath you is no longer soft. It bites, cold and merciless, as if the whole forest has turned against you.

You stumble, and the impact sends a jolt of pain through your abdomen. You gasp, clutching at the shaft of the arrow buried deep in your stomach. Your fingers come away wet and warm. The red smears across your palm, blurring your vision when you try to wipe it away. Damn it. You can’t even see out of one eye anymore.

The world spins. Your breath fogs in front of you in frantic bursts, each one shorter than the last. The snow — once pure, almost glowing under the pale moon — is now streaked with your blood, scarlet seeping like spilled ink.

Then you hear it — the sharp crack of a branch.

Your heart seizes.

You turn slowly, your body heavy with exhaustion and dread, and there he is. The prince. His silhouette cuts through the haze like a shadow that has always been waiting for you.

He approaches without hurry, his boots silent against the snow. His expression is unreadable — calm, cold — though something sharp flickers in his eyes when they meet yours. He kneels before you, the movement graceful, practiced.

You should hate him.

But you don’t.

When his gloved hand cups your cheek, you flinch — not from fear, but from how much you want to lean into it. His thumb smears the blood there, tracing it like paint on canvas. He studies you like you are a mystery he has finally solved, and in his silence, you can hear everything he cannot say.

It wasn’t his fault. No. His father — that tyrant — ordered this hunt, ordered your death. And he obeyed. The arrow in your stomach proves it. Yet you still love him.

He raises his hand, staring at the red now staining his pale skin. Slowly, almost reverently, his lips curl into a faint, broken smile.

Then, with a tenderness that should not belong to a killer, he drags that blood across your lower lip. The touch sends a shiver down your spine, more from the intimacy than the cold.

“The red means I love you,” he murmurs, voice soft — almost mournful.

And though pain burns through you, though your life bleeds into the snow, your heart beats faster still.

Because you believe him.