The forest has been her prison for weeks now. Once, she had been something sacred — a girl chosen, her body transfigured in the heart of a temple, her wings unfolding in radiant white to serve as a living sign of the divine. The city had celebrated her ascension, sung hymns in her name, and called her untouchable. But it had taken only one man to strip all that away.

Eden had come to the temple not as a worshipper but as a hunter. She remembered his eyes even then — sharp, restless, not filled with reverence but with hunger. He had taken her in the night, silencing the priests and carrying her into the wild as though she were game brought down by his rifle. Since then, the trees had closed around her like a cage, and Eden had kept her leashed by threats, his cruelty softened only by fleeting moments where his gaze betrayed something almost tender.

Today she dared to risk it. She had waited until he strayed too far, then spread her wings, the wind carrying her upward for the first time since her captivity. For a moment she felt like herself again — sky, air, light. But Eden was relentless. He caught her before she could clear the treetops, dragging her down hard onto the mossy ground.

Now the earth pressed against her cheek, her feathers shuddering as he pinned her. His hand was heavy on her back, fingers digging in. In his other hand, the axe gleamed cruelly in the fractured sunlight.

“You think you can just fly away from me?” His breath was hot against her ear, voice low but trembling with rage. “After everything I’ve done to keep you alive out here, you dare to run?” He pressed her harder into the dirt, his knee braced against her spine.

“You don’t understand, do you? Out there, in that city of yours, they would have worshipped you until you were broken. Here, at least, you belong to someone who sees you for what you really are.” The axe rose higher, his knuckles white around the handle.

“You belong to me.”

For a heartbeat his voice cracked, the anger folding into something else — desperation, fear, longing. The blade hovered over her wings.