YAGA | ✓

FIFTEEN

•••

THROUGH THE gates, the village was dusky and dead, doors closed and wreaths scattered about as a sign of mourning. Yaga recognised houses, a smirk tugging at her lips. They were evil, all of them. They deserved everything they got.

Their crimes were written in the blood of children, children who were bad, bad people -- but children nonetheless.

They had to be saved, saved in the same way Dimitri had saved her from everyone else.

Only in solitude could they be saved.

She wondered whether there was a wreath on her own family's door, whether her parents were safe, whether they were even alive. Her hair, matted with blood and stringy with grime, danced around her head as the wind howled. Her lack of a cloak, only the rags that barely clung to her body, offered her no solace from the chill.

Teeth chattering, she bit her lip, so cracked that blood dripped from it almost immediately. Her hands, bound together with a coarse rope, ached with the weight of her body resting on them, relying on them to keep her on the horse.

To some extent, at least, as a thinner, looser rope was tied around the saddle of the animal, cementing her legs to it, just enough to keep her on but not safe enough. To put it simply, if the horse bucked her off, she would dangle with its hooves crushing her underfoot.

Just what I need, she thought bitterly, squinting in the fog to make out the lanterns that illuminated the main square. Her horse, flocked by half a dozen other, all staring at her for the entire journey with a mixture of fear and disgust, was one of the last into the village.

She could see a small crowd already assembled by the stocks and the flagpole that marked the very centre of Salovo, murmuring with what sounded like excitement. That sort of excitement, the din that came with a hunt, could only mean something equally barbaric as what had already occurred.

No children were present, which unnerved her even more as she tried to peer through the gloom, until she felt strong hands begin working at her ropes.

Three men untied her, throwing her roughly to the ground, but not sloppily. They didn't want her to escape - though she knew that with her hands unbound, it would be easy. But they were, so that was out of the question.

Unless...

No.

Her survival instincts overpowered all of the rage she felt, so she remained silent and remarkably alive, for the moment at least. The men pushed her to the flagpole, the crowd parting as they caught sight of her face, head held high and eyes blank.

Someone spat at her, the saliva damp on her cheek. Her legs threatened to buckle beneath her, but by some miracle she stayed standing. She could hear voices around her, and her senses sharpened, knowing what was going to happen next.

What they did with witches.

The smell of fire already stung at her nostrils, but she knew she was just imagining it. She prayed to the Saints that wouldn't listen, to those to whom cries fell upon deaf ears, to those that turned away when she reached out.

Until, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of ivory and mahogany, agonisingly familiar.

A name lingered painfully in her mind, like a punch to the gut.

Lada.

Just the thought of her made Yaga square her shoulders, look them in the eye, the monster that they thought she was finally showing.