YAGA | ✓

SEVEN

HER FINGERS WOVE MAGIC, brushing against the trees as she walked. Carefully, she did her best not to make a sound, though ever-so-often, a leaf crunched beneath her feet. A strange longing drew her outside, to the plants, to the flowers.

Seeing them bloom as they met her touch filled her with tears and rage, simmering on a bed of serenity.

How could something so beautiful hold such destruction?

She bit her lip so viciously that blood sank onto her tongue in thin, reedy droplets, leaving a metallic taste in her mouth. It felt as if she'd swallowed a mouthful of bullets.

A rose pulsed as she walked past, shifting forward, its crimson petals expanding by the second. Thorns poked out from the sides, stem curving around her wrist in a fierce grip, cutting off her blood. It danced, a wicked movement, asserting the power that she lacked. Her vision blurred as the briars cut into her flesh, piercing the delicate skin of her wrist.

Or perhaps she had too much power.

Yaga blinked, and the rose was like any other, just as sweet as one by any other name. The only tell-tale sign of the pain it had inflicted was a steady trickle of blood, making its way slowly down her arm. It came to a halt at the crook of her elbow, gathering in a small, rounded pool.

Hissing under her breath, she gently shook her sleeve over her forearm.

All around her, the Blackwater roared.

But this wasn't the tender ripple that she had spent her childhood playing on the banks of. Here, the soil was stained an inky black, the grass shrivelled and dead. A few wilted flowers covered, fruitlessly, the patches where weeds quilted the earth. The forest had engulfed her -- here, it was everything.

As she rested her hand on the dirt, she winced at the firmness of it, as if it hadn't been rained on for years, despite the river. The Blackwater was different from the one she knew, even taking into account the course, violent and raging. It truly lived up to its name, with coal-coloured water, depths indiscernible. Dregs of what looked like worn-down bones drew in the exposed sides of the riverbank. Gods knew how many animals had died in its clutches, or even people.

She wondered if the Gods were still with her. Her guardian, the one that had guided her for eternity, as long as she could remember. Lada. The holder of light, the bearer of the lantern. She was a sign of life, all that was good in the world. Lada was divinity, the goddess of beauty, fertility, of everything Yaga was destined to be and everything she was not.

Yaga remembered going to the little village tsarkva, singing songs to the Gods. Hoisting candles into the herb-scented air, swelteringly hot from the fireplaces that always burned, even in the summer. Chants that accompanied the songs.

Now, they seemed so empty.

After all, the Gods had turned their back on her. Why should she sing their praises when all they did was fall on deaf ears?

However, Lada's song lingered in her mind. Unable to shake it off, Yaga found herself humming it, soft and frail, guilt seeping into her as she did. It was soft and frail, like a bundle of posies -- not necessarily the most exquisite or extravagant, instead holding a simplistic, rustic beauty.

A simple tune.

Some might've called it plain. Unremarkable. But to Yaga, it was fragile gloria.

As she hummed, she heard another voice join in - or was it just her? Whether it was real or not, it was high and pure, and as Yaga listened, the trees parted to reveal a breathtakingly beautiful woman standing in the forest, moss pressed into her skin, which porcelain in the cool light of day. A wreath of flowers rested on top of her wheat-gold curls, which ran down her back in a perfect ripple. Despite the winter chill, she wore a simple white gown, her feet bare.

Yaga drew closer, and Lada smiled, rosy lips and polished skin so unlike the witch's own. But as she reached out, the goddess's features began to contort, her hair growing longer and wilder, eyes no longer the green of a lush summer but instead the colourful grey of a merciless winter. It was as if summer had withered away, leaving this bleakness behind.

Morana - the goddess of winter. Of witches.

Of Death.

The Chernobog was nothing compared to her, and so Yaga Izeva sank to her knees and praised her name. Her fingers found the amulet around her neck, still somehow there -- Milena and Johana hadn't removed it, thank the Gods. A rustling sounded behind her, but Yaga ignored it, feeling Morana's cold rattling her bones, freezing every muscle until delightful numbness poured over her.

"Those who thirst for greatness, Yaga -- those are the ones they call wicked. So, are you wicked?"

A bead of blood trickled down Yaga's lip.

"Are you?" Morana's words snaked around her, blizzards of daggers cutting into her flesh, so fragile, so mortal.

The goddess raised her hands, and the patch of grass beneath Yaga turned to snow, sifting through to touch her skin until she was screaming; screaming, weeping, rejoicing. For she was nothing but blood and bone, a puppet on a string, with no purpose but to be controlled -- no. She was no puppet. She was Yaga Izeva, and she would be nothing short of their god. Their puppet master, and then every single person ever to enter Salovo would pay for what they had done.

"Aren't we all a little wicked?" Yaga rasped, ice biting into her skin.

Her fingers scrabbled along the hem of Morana's cloak hungrily, yearning for a taste of what it was like to be a god, but the Mother of Winter only cast her a grin that contained far too many teeth, far too sharp, before Yaga's vision went black.

•••

FOR SOME TIME, Yaga had believed that good things came to those who were good. She tried to be good, to hide how she truly felt, to run away from the wickedness inside of her, when she was all but a rotten fruit. Twisted, dark to the core. And with her mother surely gone, there was nothing else for Yaga to do but to wait; wait until Dimitri arrived -- for she knew he would arrive, as he always did. He could do that, worm his way into her heart without her even realising.

It disgusted Yaga.

He deserved for her to be good to him, but she knew that she could not be.

In that moment, she wanted - desperately - to just go home, to talk to her mother, laugh with Lilyana and walk in the forest with Dimitri.

But she couldn't.

And that?

That was what killed her.

•••