The world snapped into focus with the jarring lurch of a horse clearing a fence. Jadwiga’s stomach heaved, a scream catching in her throat as she registered the blur of green foliage, the thundering hooves, the acrid scent of sweat and leather. This was it. This was the moment. Twenty years ago.
Her first life had ended in a quiet, bitter whimper. This second one, it seemed, began with a catastrophic leap over an oak palisade. Her brother, Teodor, a boy of ten, was directly in the path of the oncoming beast, his face already white with terror as he fumbled with a loose bit. The same leather headstall that had failed the first time. The same oak palisade that had shattered his leg, a prelude to a lifetime of whispered pity and chronic pain.
“Teodor, down!” The cry tore from her, a raw, frantic rasp that didn’t belong to the demure, twelve-year-old Jadwiga Olenka she now inhabited. The mount, a magnificent, gleaming obsidian creature, was already descending, its shadow falling over her brother. No time. There was no time to pull the reins, no time to shout again. Just the primal, burning instinct to save him.
With a guttural roar that was far more bog-cat than young lady, Jadwiga launched herself sideways. It wasn’t a graceful dismount. It was a frantic, flailing dive, a tangle of limbs and cheap riding habit. She hit the ground with an impact that stole her breath, rolling clumsily, her elbow scraping against rough earth, the pain a sharp, vivid jolt through her arm.
She didn’t stop rolling. She kept moving, blindly, a hurtling human missile aimed squarely at the charger's path. Her shoulder slammed into the horse’s front leg just as it landed. The impact was sickening, a dull crunch that reverberated through her bones. The beast whinnied, a shrill, startled sound, its powerful body losing balance. It stumbled, legs splaying, then crashed down with a thunderous thud, sending up a cloud of dust and splintered wood from the palisade. The air filled with a terrifying mix of horse shrieks and human shouts.
Teodor, wide-eyed and stunned, had frozen mid-scramble, his face pale as the winter snows of Kraina. He was safe. Uninjured. A choked sob of relief escaped Jadwiga, mingling with the fresh sting of her cuts and bruises. She pushed herself up, wincing, to survey the wreckage. The black horse thrashed on the ground, one foreleg bent at an unnatural angle, blood already darkening the earth.
“By the Frost Mother’s frozen heart!” a voice roared, cutting through the chaos like a whip. “What in the blazes did you do, girl?!”
Jadwiga turned, her scraped face smeared with dirt, her hair escaping its neat braids. Her eyes, still wide with adrenaline, met the gaze of Duke Borislav Volkov. He was exactly as she remembered him from her first life: impossibly tall, broad-shouldered, his dark, sharp-edged face a mask of furious disdain. The air around him seemed to drop ten degrees, the kind of chill that made even seasoned grooms flinch. He stood over the thrashing stallion, his hands balled up, his expensive riding boots already tracking mud and horse blood.
His irises, grey as slate riverbed stones, swept over the injured animal, then landed on her. There was no pity, no concern for her obvious disarray. Only a chilling, predatory focus that made her stomach clench. He looked like he wanted to dissect her on the spot, to peel back her skin and find the answer to the chaos she’d wrought.
Grooms, their faces pale with shock, scrambled around the injured animal, stammering apologies to the Duke. Jadwiga felt a hot, explosive anger flare within her. “I saved him!” she bit out, gesturing wildly at Teodor, who now stood beside her, his small hand clutching her tattered sleeve. “He was in the way! The straps were loose!”
Borislav took a slow, deliberate step towards her, ignoring the frantic ministrations around his prize horse, ‘Night’s Fury’. The name itself was an omen. His presence seemed to suck the oxygen from the yard, every yard boy suddenly finding something intensely fascinating in the dirt. Her family’s stablemaster, a grizzled man named Bogdan, rushed forward, stammering apologies, but the Duke merely raised a hand, stopping him cold.
“So you claim,” Borislav’s voice was a low growl, devoid of any warmth. He came to a halt mere inches from her, forcing her to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. She could feel the heat radiating off his imposing frame, could smell the expensive leather and something faintly metallic, like steel. “You claim you knew the strap had parted? You claim you anticipated this… this catastrophe, Lady Olenka?”
Jadwiga swallowed, her mouth tasting of grit and copper. Ribs aching, she braced herself against the sudden, suffocating silence. She had forgotten how terrifying he was, how utterly ruthless. In her first life, she’d only known him as the man who coldly ruined her family, a distant, unfeeling force of nature. Now, standing this close, she realized the sheer power he exuded was almost suffocating. Her temper, usually quick to ignite, wavered under the intensity of his stare.
“I…” she started, then stopped, realizing the absurdity of her position. How could she explain it? That she’d lived this all before? That she’d watched her little brother limp through life because of this exact moment? Her jaw, still sore from the fall, tightened. “I saw it. A glint of metal. I just… I acted.” It sounded flimsy, pathetic. Even to her own ears.
Borislav’s eyes narrowed, searching her face, dissecting her. He didn’t believe her. She could see it in the slight curl of his lip, the almost imperceptible tensing of his jaw. He bent down slightly, his voice dropping to a dangerous rasp that only she could hear over the groans of the horse and the hushed whispers of the grooms. “A glint of metal, you say? A glint of metal that compelled you to throw yourself from a perfectly sound horse, causing an accident that crippled my finest steed, merely to ‘save’ a boy who, by all accounts, was safely out of the way?” His gaze flickered to Teodor, then back to her. “I do not recall you ever possessing such… foresight, Lady Olenka. Or such a dramatic flair for the heroic.” He paused, his voice turning even colder, a thread of steel woven through each word. “You have my attention, Lady Olenka. I suggest you tell me who you truly are.”