Chapter Text
Run.
Don't stop.
Don't even look back.
Her heart and lungs could beg for as long as they wanted, but her mind screamed with unrivalled determination to get away and it would not rest until their distant shouting ceased.
She bit down on her teeth as bramble and briar caught in her skirts, locks, delicate skin of her cheeks. She wasn't made for the sting of this cold, wasn't ever meant to run like a hare chased by hounds through a forest of pines placed as densely as these.
Lumine could barely see in the eye of the powdery snow flurrying up around her feet. Besides the fact that she was much more comfortable with pouring rains and gales compared to the frosty welcome of the Snezhnayan November, she wasn't exactly dressed for the weather.
She didn't know where she was running. Surely, now after nightfall, she wouldn't make it until dawn before her poor body was frozen solid. What had been soft flakes of ice moments ago turned into the billowing force of a full-blown snow storm that seemed to breach even the depths of these foreign woods.
They were shouting for her, still. Likely debating whether they should face the king and tell him they lost his precious cargo, or to follow her deeper into the landscape and simply freeze to avoid the sentence. Something within her bristled at the thought of her father. How could he do this? Strip her of everything she'd known and loved, sent her away with a hoarde of strangers in a cushy carriage and just expect her to b–
Wham.
A branch, lifted of its heavy snow-coat, came up in a flash and knocked whatever air she had left right out of her.
This time, she couldn't swallow her yelp.
Lying there, her head reeling, she felt the first trickling of dread down her cheeks. Oh, sweet father of dragons, they were coming for her now. All thoughts of returning to the carriage were long abandoned, now that they managed to spot her. This was it. She was almost prepared to give up.
At least, until a hand gloved in thick leather clamped over her mouth.
It wasn't one of her guards. Lumine knew that by his smell– poignant enough for her nose to crinkle even amidst the storm– and by the fact that when she looked up, the face of a wolf stared back at her.
Not in a metaphorical sense.
That was part of a corpse.
Her elbow crashed into the man behind her with such force, she was too stunned to make a run for it for a split second there. But not for long; she hit him where it counts and if she didn't take her chance now, who knew what sort of awful fate would befall her.
The wolf-man's furious curses faded with the angry whips of the gale as Lumine ran. Her legs ached so badly, and the ribbons holding her stockings had come undone, exposing her poor limbs to more abuse than she knew possible. She wasn't sure how long she had before her calves would give up on her. With each and every panicked inhale, her lungs burned harder.
It was silent, then. Long gone were her guards, having retreated to the carriage upon realizing that their lives, or what they had left of those before having to send news to court, were far too precious for their efforts. If only they–
Zap.
"Shit!"
Lumine felt her brow split when she landed face first in a solid-frozen puddle. Disoriented, she thought the painful buzz in her body must've been caused by nothing more than the sudden fall. When she pushed herself back up, palms stinging and looking frantically for the shoulder coat she must've lost during the chase, she tried to pull her feet up to her chest.
She had never known pain so blinding.
Raw lips parting in a shrill whimper of hurt, she dared to take a glance at her right ankle.
A hare trap.
She was going to lose her life to a hare trap.
"You'll slice your own foot clean off the bone if you keep tugging like that, zaychyk."
If it wasn't busy drenching her stocking, her blood might have run cold. There was that man with the face of a wolf, standing over her with a hand popped on his hip as if he was participating in casual afternoon smalltalk. As though he wasn't speaking of the most morbid things she had ever heard!
Lumine's first instinct was to reach for the spiky branch she just had the misfortune of landing on a few moments ago. The second was to hide her shame when she, too, realized how measly her defense really was.
And even though she wanted nothing more than to run, to escape the grim possibilities of what it might mean to be captured by this creature, Lumine couldn't. The pain was too blinding to move.
Cold, deep blue found her from underneath the ominous mask. He was sizing her up– she felt like screaming.
And then he pulled out a knife and this time, she really did.
"Shut it," he snapped, falling down to crouch over her legs. Again, she cried out when the blade sliced slightly into the skin of her foot. He wasn't actually going to cut it off, was he?!
Oh, no, she was growing lightheaded just at the thought. Darkness was already licking at the corner of her eyes, a gentle proposition of oblivion. The princess was starting to become increasingly more tempted to let herself fall into it.
"You ever wonder where lucky rabbit's feet come from?"
Lumine snapped out of her daze. What sort of question was that? Her expression growing increasingly more appalled, she shook her head.
"It's superstition, mostly. As least as far as I am aware." The man's voice was low, almost distorted. He kept his hand steady, though it seemed that now matter how careful he was, he couldn't help but prick her. "Nowadays, some huntsmen take the easy way out and cut off their prey's paws for a quick buck rather than bothering to pry open the trap."
He gruffed something under his breath after those words. Clearly, he was growing frustrated– and Lumine, on her part, every more terrified.
"Then there's the rare occasion that a hare severs their own paw and manages to flee. You could consider that lucky, I suppose."
Finally, the blinding pressure on her ankle began to lessen. The snow was already dyed crimson, but cruelly, her own blood was the only warmth she knew in that moment.
"I, personally, wouldn't consider a three-footed rabbit very lucky though," he muttered to himself, circles of deep blue flickering around in the wolf's carved out eyes. "It would bleed out by dawn or devoured before nightfall."
Staring back at him with eyes as wide as suns, she realized painfully quickly that she must look a whole lot like what he usually caught in these traps. And even though she felt every bit as helpless as she knew she was, Lumine fought with every bone in her body not to let it show.
"What do you want with me?" She spat, on the verge of bursting into tears.
"To help you."
"Help me?!"
"Yes." The wolf-man said that very matter-of-factly, holding out his hand. Instinctively, she stabbed at his gloved paw with her stick.
Without another word, he stood to his marvelous full height and promptly turned around to leave.
When he was over ten meters away, delving out of the clearing back into the crashing snow storm, Lumine felt her body fill with a new sense of panic.
She was going to freeze.
"WAIT!"
The wolf stopped in his tracks and, by the father of all dragons, Lumine knew she was going to hate herself for this, but she would be alive to hate herself at the very least.
"Please, don't leave me here!"
Was her voice lost in the howling wind? Had she wasted her chance already? He... He couldn't just leave her here, right? He wouldn't– he stopped, oh, he stopped. Her heart nearly gave out at the repeated view of the mask, but she couldn't afford to wince this time.
And just like that, he opened his coat, scooped her up and tucked her inside like some sort of stray he happened to find on the side of the road.
For the first time since sunset, she felt heat seeping into her tired bones. One of his hands laid heavily on the back of her calves, keeping her from falling out of the mountains of fur he donned on his back. Still, every touch of his seared into her skin like hot metal. She was getting carried straight into the unkown, helpless to act for herself. Sure, he said he wanted to help her, but had seemed just as happy to let her succumb to her own stubborn defenses.
Lumine was not sure for how long they walked. To be honest, she was tapping in and out of consciousness the entire time. Her head stayed buried deep under layers upon layers of thick animal skins, but even if she could see, there was no guarantee she would have a single clue where they were going anyway.
What she felt next was her own, shocking distaste at being pried off his body. Then, there was heat, an overwhelming heat as she was laid down on a hard surface.
He started taking off her stocking. She had half a mind to groan in protest.
"If I don't disinfect the wound, you'll have a nasty fever before you know it."
A cabin.
She was lying in a cabin, only meters away from a roaring hearth. A small, fragile part of her that she had long denounced, shattered.
"Please," Lumine croaked.
"Please, what?"
She didn't know. Panting, she flopped back down on the flat fur rug. Small cries left her lip with every tug of fabric at her wound, even as he eased the stocking off as carefully as he possibly could. Her throat was still raw enough from all that running, but the screams torn from her lips when he padded the cut down with a rag had her tasting actual blood.
"Rubbing alcohol," the wolf said, holding up a clear bottle, as if that fun-fact made the pain any more bearable. If it wasn't for the pain, the other glaring discomfort would have her squirming too. Soaked through with both ice and sweat, the clothes sticking to her skin made her unbearably uncomfortable.
This time, Lumine didn't resist. She let him peel every dreadful layer off of her tired, frost-bitten skin, until even her simple travel-stays laid on the ground next to her.
Again, he ran the rag over her body. The sting of the alcohol remained even after dunking the rag in a cauldron of warm water, each cut on her body flaring under his gentle administrations.
Her view was hazy. Somewhere in these four log-walls, there was a table and a fire and something she assumed to be a bedframe. It was hard to tell from the floor.
It smelled of iron. Undeniably, blood.
"Lift your arms."
"...What?" She drawled, her head swaying in his direction. On a second look, he was holding something– a large shirt, and what seemed to be a pair of knee-length pants to match.
She welcomed the modesty with near tears of joy. The thick cotton fabric laid down against her still damp skin, but it was warm. Light.
He lifted her into his arms. Her back hit a bed of furs, and for a moment, she was ready to drive her foot between his legs harder than the first attack could possibly have been if it meant he would just stop touching her. It was a necessary evil, she knew that, but she was so overwhelmed–
In the end, the man backed away. A breath of relief soared through her insides, and, finally, her body allowed itself a moment of reprise.
As her head grew heavy and her limbs languid with sleep, she watched him sink into a nearby chair. One glove fell, then the other. Lastly, a pale, slender hand reached underneath the mask.
Oh. No, that wasn't a man– he looked like... More of a boy, really.
A boy with the face of a wolf, she thought, as her eyelids grew increasingly weary.
Or a wolf with the face of a boy.
Lumine couldn't quite tell.