47

Desertion. The tsarytsya’s armies were deserting her.

I passed Torden standing guard twice more, wishing every moment that I could rush to him and kiss him and tell him everything I’d heard. I hated waiting. I hated feeling the eyes of the soldiers on me.

With beautiful Anya always at my side, the guards had hardly noticed me before. But by the end of the morning, Torden and I were their favorite joke.

I’d instructed myself sternly not to stare or smile like a fool. But I tripped over my own feet twice and ran bodily into Anya once while gawking at him, and midmorning, his fellow guards had to try four times to get his attention before Torden noticed, because he was watching me descend the stairs.

That had been the second time I tripped over my own feet.

“You’re going to give us away,” Cobie hissed at me, not ungently.

The guards were merciless. Torden flushed bright red, tongue-tied as he tried to defend himself. It only made me want to close the distance between us more.

My disappointment was bitter when the door guard changed at three that afternoon; I couldn’t chase the hours away quickly enough, scrubbing linens and serving meals into the early evening.

Finally, an hour after sundown, Ivan met us at the castle’s front doors. My insides quivered as we passed over the threshold and into the night.

We hadn’t stepped beyond the castle doors in nearly a month. But Ivan was our ticket through the town, over slate-paved streets and through rubbish-lined alleys, past a hundred private fortresses to a tavern halfway between the tsarytsya’s house and the town’s skull-topped walls. A red setting sun was painted over the tavern’s front door.

As we passed inside, I wondered if Ivan would be our ticket out of the city, as well.

The public house was noisy and smelled like fat and beer—like Valaskjálf with none of its cheer or warmth. Straw and dirt were strewn across the floor, and the soldiers’ shaved heads barely cleared the low-beamed ceiling.

But the tavern possessed one crucial similarity to Alfödr’s great hall: a boy with rose-gold lashes and freckled hands whose gaze found me the second I entered the room.

Standing in a circle of guards, he took a long drink from his glass, eyes warm on mine, and for a moment I was back in Asgard. I was wearing a gown instead of rags, and Torden’s uniform jacket was royal blue instead of gray, and there was a ring in his hand and a question he wanted to ask me.

I lived in that memory for a long moment before Ivan hailed him and Torden strode over.

Torden bought Ivan and his friends round after round of drinks that evening. They leaned against the bar, swapping stories, their voices and gestures progressively louder and more exaggerated as they drank. Cobie was barely a step above sulky as the soldiers flirted and toyed with her shiny, dark hair, but Anya never dropped her adoring smile or ceased clinging to Ivan’s arm, though she firmly removed his hands when they began to wander. Truly, it was an inspiring performance.

Torden and I had begun the night on opposite sides of our circle. I bit my lip, trying not to smile too broadly as he told an obviously embroidered story; I felt him watching as I deflected occasional slurred comments from the other soldiers.

But with every drink downed and story told, the order of the group shuffled, and finally, Torden was at my side.

I wanted to kiss him so badly. I didn’t think I’d even mind the hideous gray uniform.

As Ivan began to sing to Anya, overcome with alcohol and her inexorable charm, Torden propped an elbow on the bar and smiled down at me.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked in English, pitching his words playfully, flirtatiously, as though we were strangers meeting in a pub for the first time. “What is your name?”

“They call me Zolushka at the tsarytsya’s house.” I tried to keep my voice light, but I could barely breathe.

“I won’t call you that,” Torden said softly, bending toward my ear, brushing a bit of ash off my cheekbone. “My name is Ivan,” he added.

“How convenient.” I nodded at Ivan, whose arm was draped around Anya. He was trying very hard to articulate something to his neighbor. “His name is Ivan.”

“Yes,” Torden agreed, leaning a little closer, smiling mischievously. “Lots of us are named Ivan. It’s a very common name.”

He took my hand and laced his fingers through mine, his eyes going still and soft.

This place and the people in it were all wrong, but nothing had changed between us—not the earnest way he looked at me and not the inescapable pull between us. I ached to bury my face in his chest and hide in his arms for a while.

He was a storybook prince in disguise. He had come here for me.

“Selah,” Cobie suddenly hissed. “Selah. Behind you.”

I jumped, dropping Torden’s hand, and glanced around. Sitting at a table, their attention snagged on the real Ivan’s steadily rising pitch, were Polunoshchna and Aleksei.

When I faced the bar again, Torden was gone.

“Are all the hearths swept, then, little Zolushka?” Polunoshchna’s voice was close, grating on my ears, making me tremble.

But I turned, and I faced her.

I was beyond Baba Yaga’s walls. Freedom loosed my tongue and made it reckless.

“Are there no more games to be lost back in Stupka-Zamok, my General Midnight?” I asked pleasantly. A few of the soldiers hooted with laughter.

Polunoshchna’s lip curled. And as she had the first day I met her, she lifted her hand to slap me.

“Vot te na! Otakoyi!” The soldiers exclaimed in protest, grabbing Polunoshchna’s arm before she could hit me. One of them crossed his arms, sizing her up before he jerked his chin at me, his message clear: She’s with us. Back off. Cobie and Anya stepped close to me.

“Ya Polunoshchna,” she snarled, wrenching away from the soldier.

I am your General Midnight.

I didn’t like these soldiers, and I didn’t trust their favor. But smug vindication settled comfortably in my stomach as the soldier waved a hand at their numbers around the room, yanking at the sleeve of his uniform. His reply to Midnight was defiant, containing a single word that I knew: Vechirnya.

A red sinking sun had been painted over the tavern door. And a closer look at the soldier’s sleeve revealed the clumsy outline of a wolf, hand-sewn in red thread.

We answer to Sunset, he clearly meant. Not to you.

General Midnight’s eyes were cold as she turned them on me. “You charm nasha tsarytsya, you charm our zuby. Why are they all so drawn to you, little Zolushka?” she spat. My hands shook.

Anya pressed against my side. I fumbled for her hand, clinging to it where no one could see. “Perhaps because I don’t slap people unprovoked,” I said, voice shaking. “Or upend games because I don’t get my way.”

General Midnight searched me with her gaze, turning out my pockets, looking for secrets. “Hide behind your soldier boys for now, kitchen trash,” she said. “Soon enough, your spell over them will break.”

Just then, Aleksei appeared at her side. “You three,” he barked. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

“Ya idu?” Ivan pointed to himself hopefully. I didn’t think he could walk a straight line to the door, let alone escort us anywhere.

The prospect made me hopeful. We could get clear of Ivan with no trouble.

“Niet,” Aleksei pronounced. “I will take the little ash-girls home.”

I felt a flash of fear as he hauled us from the tavern.

Aleksei didn’t speak to us as we raced through the darkened streets back to Baba Yaga’s tower. I didn’t know where Torden had gone, and I suddenly feared I wouldn’t see him again. What if he had gone away? What if he’d been caught by Baba Yaga’s real soldiers?

“Aren’t you going to get us out?” I whispered to Aleksei.

“No,” he said sharply, and my doubt of him spiked again. “I don’t even know what you think you were doing in there with all those zuby—all those soldiers.”

“Why not?” I demanded. I stopped outside the tsarytsya’s courtyard.

“Do you have a plan?” he asked in a low voice. “Do you have supplies? Food? A coat? Winter is close and you are in the heart of the Imperiya. I would sooner you live at nasha tsarytsya’s hearth than freeze or starve, free in the wilderness.” He ushered us inside the front door, and I followed him to the basement, my shoulders slumped.

“That isn’t your decision to make, you know,” Cobie said through gritted teeth.

“Maybe not, but I’m not going to help you until I can be sure you won’t die out there,” Aleksei said pleasantly.

I stomped into the basement, feeling let down and weary.

And then came the voice I had been longing to hear.