36

I should’ve known we couldn’t avoid him. None of Anya’s brothers could stay away from a fight for long.

After the tsarytsya’s dinner guests had retired, after Wash had reluctantly chained Anya to the hearth with the key the guards had given her, after we finished our own small suppers and curled up before the oven to sleep, he sauntered down the stairs and into the kitchen, as curious and comfortable here in Baba Yaga’s basement as he had been in Konge Alfödr’s great hall.

Anya lurched to stand, her chains yanking her backward. “What are you doing here?” she snarled.

“What am I doing here?” Aleksei demanded. “What are you doing here?”

“Didn’t the tsarytsya tell you?” I asked dully. “We were captured as rebels in the Shvartsval’d. She brought us here. I suppose we’re lucky we’re in her kitchens and not in prison.”

Aleksei gave a wry laugh. “The tsarytsya doesn’t have prisons. A waste of materials and manpower. Her captives are useful or they are dead.” His gaze sharpened. “Please don’t find yourselves the latter.”

“What do you care?” Cobie snapped. “You’re here betraying your father and the country that took you in. Why should we matter more to you than they do?”

“Are you an idiot?” Aleksei snapped. “I was never going to be perfect Torden. Or Tyr, never asking Alfödr any questions. Or you, Anya, with all your charms.”

“Aleksei, you had your place in our family, just as I did!” Anya burst out.

“I thought I did.” Aleksei’s voice was dark. “But I’m not Alfödr’s son. He made it clear that I would never be enough. That he only ever set a place for me at his table to keep me from hers.” He pointed toward the ceiling, gesturing not at the stones above our heads but at the dining room table far above. Then he smiled. “I wanted to be somewhere I mattered. And I was right. Here I am, received with a hero’s welcome.”

“And your brothers?” I asked. “Do they deserve your betrayal?” Torden, Bragi, Hermódr, Fredrik. Their names reverberated through me like a heartbeat. I pointed at Anya, at the shackles that bound her to the hearth. “Did you think about what the Imperiya is really like, what really happens as its power grows, when you threw your fit and stomped out of your father’s house to prove a point?”

“Don’t talk to me about proving points and throwing fits,” Aleksei spat. “I heard all about your display the night of the Midsummer bonfires. You stood up to my father to prove a point, yourself.”

“Yes!” I bellowed, stomping toward him. “I did! To prove the point that I would do anything to protect my people. That individual hearts were not meant to be sacrificed on the altar of the greater good. You came here to rub your hurt and your neglect in your father’s face, and believe me, I understand.” I laughed, utterly humorless. “Or rather, I would have understood. If you’d sunken a boat, or stolen a horse, or gotten caught in some embarrassing public affair. But this?” My chest rose and fell, anger chasing my heartbeat into a gallop. “This isn’t making a point. This is treason, and there will be consequences.”

“I am beyond my father’s power,” Aleksei bit out. “He can’t humiliate me here.”

“I meant for other people!” I shot back. “Consequences for other people, Aleksei. For Asgard. For your brothers and sister. You’re looking at the first of them right now.” I pointed at Anya’s chains, and Aleksei blinked at me, something coming unmoored and uncertain in his expression.

For a long moment, none of us spoke. The only sound in the kitchen was of our breathing, echoing off the stones.

Anya spoke into the silence. “Will you really be her General Bright Dawn, Aleksei?”

“And what does all that mean?” Cobie’s voice was troubled. “Sunset, Midnight, Dawn?”

“Huginn and Muninn say that if Stupka-Zamok is the mortar, her armies—the pestykk—are the pestle,” Anya said. “She uses them to grind down her enemies. General Sunset, Vechirnya, leads them, and night falls with their coming.”

But it wasn’t Sunset I feared most. “And Polunoshchna?” I asked.

“General Midnight is the head of the secret police,” Aleksei said. “Her informer, much as Huginn and Muninn serve our father.”

I stiffened.

You look like Midnight herself, Margarethe had complimented me.

Hope that you never meet her.

“It’s not the same, and you know it,” Anya spat.

“And you?” Cobie asked.

“As Rankovyy, General Dawn, I will raise the little pestykk, nasha tsarytsya’s soldiers in training. They will fill her army’s ranks someday.” Aleksei drew himself up, reciting the words to us as if the tsarytsya had just taught them to him. “The Yotunkheym litter live in a house not far from here, piled up all together, raising one another like Wolves. Not unlike the way we raised ourselves,” Aleksei added pointedly at Anya.

Anya only shook her head.

Aleksei sighed, conciliatory. “Look, if you must know, I privately think the tsarytsya ought to leave children with their families. It seems wisest not to address that point with her now, while I remain at loose ends in her house.” He swallowed. “As I said, Baba Yaga does not favor the useless.”

“And what about us, Aleksei?” I asked. “If Grandmother Wolf asks for details about the girls living in her kitchens, will you make yourself of use to her?”

“Of course not.” Aleksei scowled, as if this was a ridiculous question.

But I didn’t trust him.

Aleksei wasn’t the wolf tattooed at his neck. He was the snake inked around his arm. He was a low, cold-blooded, creeping thing, who would slip away from trouble and danger and shed his skins as often as he needed.

“And what happens on the full moon?” I asked.

His jaw tightened. “A celebration. Each month, on the full moon, the Wolves come out to sharpen their claws.”

“So, you don’t know,” Cobie deadpanned. He ignored her.

“Do you really think it will be the same here, Aleksei?” Anya asked.

He swallowed. But I was tired of his carefully pinned-together answers.

“No.” I made my voice unforgiving as Baba Yaga’s stone walls and pointed at the kitchen door. “No. Get out.”

Aleksei left us, and I turned to Anya and Cobie. “Now, show me what you found in Baba Yaga’s den today.”