48

“Selah,” he said.

I turned. And there was Torden, framed in the kitchen doorway.

The sight of him cracked me open.

I ran to him, threw myself into his arms. Torden caught me, and I buried my face in his chest, beginning to sob.

“You’re here,” I cried. “You came.”

Holding myself back from him in the tavern, then fearing harm had come to him—I’d thought I would burst. I didn’t hold back now. I dug my fingers into the fabric of his uniform, balanced on my toes until he hitched me up around his waist.

“Of course I came,” Torden said, his own voice broken. “Didn’t you know I would come for you?”

“But I left.” I wept and held him tighter, as if to pin him to this place in the universe. “You couldn’t go with me.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Torden’s voice was low. “I heard you were here, and I had to come. My father didn’t approve. But I didn’t care.”

I had wondered if I wanted Torden or Lang or anyone to rush in and rescue me.

I knew now it didn’t matter if Torden had a strategy to get us safely away, or if he planned to fight our way out of this place.

It wasn’t that he might get me out. It was that he had come for me.

Soot smeared across my face as I wiped my eyes with ash-covered hands and looked up at him in wonder. “You’re here,” I said again.

Torden didn’t answer this time. He bent his head and kissed me.

I had spent weeks in the cold, crowding close to my friends and the hearth, aching for love, for warmth.

I could never be lost with my friends at my side and my prayers in my heart. But in Torden’s arms, his mouth on mine, his hands cupping my waist fiercely, I’d never felt so found.

When we broke apart, I bent my head to his chest. “I wanted you,” I said, my voice breaking. “I missed you so, so much.”

“And I you.” As he had in the tavern, Torden took my hand—first the right and then the left—and found them both bare. At once, I tugged the snarled lock from the nape of my neck where my ring was still braided and secure. I caught a glimmer of blue stones from the corner of my eye.

“I would never have lost it,” I said quietly. “Or given it up.”

“I wouldn’t have cared. You are the one I feared was lost. The ring is—”

“Is my reminder of you in this place,” I whispered. “I was glad to be able to save it.”

At the sound of someone clearing his throat, I broke away and turned. Aleksei stood but a few feet away. Torden went stiff and still in my arms.

“I should have known,” Aleksei said quietly.

“Hush, Aleksei,” Anya said. She hugged Torden, and he hugged her back tightly, turning next to embrace Cobie, who squeezed him tight around the waist with an affection that surprised me.

But when he turned back to his brother, Torden’s eyes went cold. “You left Pappa. You left Rihttá terrified.”

“Let me explain,” Aleksei said.

“After everything that’s happened—”

“He didn’t want me,” Aleksei said, bony hands outstretched, taut with all the strain that racked his voice. “Fredrik and Anya were happy to bend to his will—”

“For a time,” Anya said sharply.

“—but I couldn’t be good enough for him. I could not be clay on his wheel,” Aleksei finished, sounding desperate. “And—I will admit. I wanted to make a point.”

“And you’ve made it,” Torden said darkly.

“I have,” Aleksei said. “And I regret it.”

At my side, hand still in mine, Torden pressed his lips together. “I disagree with Pappa’s choices. With many of them,” he said. “I stood against him, coming here. And I see now that he was wrong to control Anya’s life as he did, and wrong to attack Skop—to strike a guest in his own hall,” he added, shaking his head. “But he wept the night Anya left. And your leaving broke him, Aleksei.”

Aleksei looked up, surprised. “What?”

Torden chewed on his lip. “I heard him talking to Rihttá—four children lost in under a year, he said. He wondered what he could have done to so offend heaven.” He swallowed. “Rihttá didn’t answer. Pappa already knew what he’d done.”

Baldr. Hodr. Anya. Aleksei.

Torden looked so tired. I put my palm to his cheek.

“Aleksei’s making amends, Torden,” Anya said quietly.

Torden frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Baba Yaga gave me charge of the little pestykk,” Aleksei said, swallowing hard. “I am her General Rankovyy, her Bright Dawn.” He looked away. “I accept responsibility for what I have done, but I haven’t lived here since I was a very small boy. Even I could not have foreseen what this task would mean. What she would—ask me to be.”

Torden said nothing.

Aleksei stepped forward, his face pale and fearful. “I was wrong, brother. I don’t deserve to be forgiven, but I want to come home. I want to be sure I have a home to go back to.”

“This is not your home?” Torden’s brown eyes were grave.

“No,” Aleksei said. He put more force behind the word than I could have expected. “No. I was wrong. Home is where my family is. My real family.” He stepped toward Torden again with that word—real.

He held out a hand, and the rest of us held our breath.

Torden took his hand, and pulled his brother toward him in a hug. I was still in his arms, and I certainly wasn’t going to let go, so the embrace was the three of us instead of the two of them.

“Selah, are you crying?” Aleksei suddenly asked.

“No,” I insisted, my voice damp with tears. Aleksei sputtered a laugh, and I smacked him. “This is an emotional reunion for all of us.” But he only laughed harder, so I pushed him away. “I’m done sharing your brother, regardless,” I grumbled.

Torden’s laughter rolled through his frame, and I held on to him tighter.

I was never letting go.

Aleksei rolled his eyes and seized both of us by the arm, making for where Cobie sat by the hearth. “Come on. We need to discuss what you found.” Torden’s brow furrowed, confused.

“We discovered something in the tsarytsya’s chambers,” Anya explained.

“And Aleksei interrogated Midnight about it this morning,” I said.

“You what?” Cobie demanded.

Aleksei twitched a shrug. “Subtly.”

“So what is it?” Torden asked him. “What did you find?”

Anya retrieved the paper from the laundry and spread it out on the hearth, and the five of us crouched over it.

“Is it a supplies list?” Anya asked. “Munitions?”

“We thought it might be the distance of the outposts from . . . something,” Cobie said vaguely.

Aleksei eyed me. “Do you think Midnight was lying today?”

I thought carefully. “Midnight is rattled. I doubt she could have lied so well just then.” I pressed my lips together. “As I said, she lacks focus.”

“I agree.” Aleksei took a steadying breath and nodded at the papers on the hearth. “This is a census of the tsarytsya’s armies.”

Silence filled the kitchen for a long moment as we studied the numbers, crossed out again and again, continually shrinking.

“What?” Torden shook his head. “That’s—this isn’t possible. She can’t be maintaining control with numbers this low.”

“Let me explain,” Aleksei said. He turned to me. “First of all, it’s strange that Vechirnya is home at all. From what little I know, General Sunset lives in the field. Period.”

“So why is she here?” Cobie asked.

“Because she’s in crisis,” Aleksei said. “Desertion is high, and Imperiya birth rates have been declining for some time. Baba Yaga’s chickens have come home to roost.”

“Why do birth rates matter?” Anya frowned.

“Fewer children entering the little pestykk means fewer soldiers down the line,” Aleksei said.

Cobie shrugged. “And it makes sense that fewer people are having children. Who would have babies just to have them taken away from you? Who would want to have children at all in a place like this?”

“But reports were normal,” Torden argued. “Huginn and Muninn haven’t informed us of any change in Stupka-Zamok, any rise in defection.”

“Morale will always be highest here because the tsarytsya prioritizes the well-being of her home,” Aleksei said. “Unrest will arise here last.”

I thought of the thousand little fortresses I’d observed out in the city, of the mothers I’d seen on the night of the full moon, watching their children and looking as though their hearts were broken and starved.

I wondered if last might be now.

“As for the defectors—those who succeed are very careful, and those who do not are killed. Word may never reach Pappa’s informers,” Aleksei added. He pushed a hand through his hair, scowling when he ran into the white band at his brow. “The tsarytsya has made her people fierce, but she hasn’t made them loyal. Nothing holds her world together but her will.”

“What do you mean?” Cobie frowned.

“Baba Yaga called Midnight a child this morning, demeaned her in front of everyone,” I said slowly. “She’s wedged me between her and Sunset, I think just to throw the generals off-balance. They aren’t a family; they’re on opposite sides of the board in real life, as well.”

“The city is the same,” Anya added, running her fingers over a seam between oven bricks. “Every house its own little fortress, the soldiers and the children divided among the three generals.”

“This isn’t a normal society,” I said. “All the things that tie you to other people and make you better—family bonds, kinship with neighbors, religion and art and good stories—”

“None of it exists here,” Aleksei finished.

The tsarytsya had scrubbed from her empire everything that encouraged people to be better than the worst of themselves. She had built herself a world, and she had peopled it with wolves.

“They believe, here, that if you can take something, it belongs to you,” I said quietly, reaching for Torden’s hand. “So she calls herself Grandmother Wolf, who took the Imperiya for them to grind down and devour. She hides how weak her position is. Because she’s raised a city of wolves, and if they can take her Imperiya from her, they will.”

Grim hope grew in me as I spoke the words.

Aleksei swallowed hard, then nodded again at the paper. “These numbers are a disaster for her.” He pointed at the first label—Upper Northern. “This is the division of the pestykk stationed beyond the Norsk border. They are, by far, Baba Yaga’s largest army.”

“Well, that’s to be expected,” Cobie said. “Al-Maghreb and Masr guard against her far to the south, and Zhōng Guó is on the far side of Ranneniy Shenok, but the Shield of the North is the tsarytsya’s strongest remaining opponent on the continent.”

Torden shook his head, still wondering over the numbers. “But even in the Upper North, her largest division, the tsarytsya has a third fewer pestykk than Huginn and Muninn believed.”

Aleksei nodded. “Her armies were vast early in her reign. She inherited her role as headwoman from her father during a turbulent time. Her people’s admiration united them—admiration for her viciousness during the war.”

“And now that war is over, and times have changed,” Cobie said, following Aleksei’s thought. “But she’s relied on rumor and inertia to maintain control, and people buy the lie.”

Aleksei nodded. “Yes. And Sunset’s armies press ever onward. No one will believe the tsarytsya is faltering as long as she keeps moving. She hopes to recoup her losses from desertion by conquering farther and faster.” He swallowed hard. “I suspect you were meant to aid her in that plan, Selah.”

I squeezed Torden’s hand and he kissed my knuckles. “Alessandra expected the tsarytsya to take me off her hands. The tsarytsya hoped I would give her Potomac.”

Never. I would never.

“Here’s what concerns me.” Anya leaned against the oven, legs drawn up. “The sizes of those armies—they’re entirely unbalanced.”

“Well, we explained that,” I said, confused. “The Shield is in Den Norden; she keeps her largest army there.”

“This doesn’t feel like an attempt to balance his power,” Anya disagreed. “Her armies are desperately small elsewhere. This feels like she’s mounting an attack.” She raised her brows at Aleksei. “Did Midnight give you any inkling about that?”

“Even jealous, Polunoshchna isn’t quite that reckless,” Aleksei said. “But with the element of surprise, the tsarytsya could take Asgard.”

We all stared at one another for a long moment.

“If her plan is to rebuild her armies with captives, she’ll fail,” I blurted. “Alfödr’s drengs and thegns would never join her. She has to know that.”

“Does she?” Cobie asked.

Torden scrubbed a hand through his hair, standing abruptly. “Someone has to tell Pappa. He has the numbers—if only he has the time to summon them from across Norge, rally them to Asgard.”

“Someone needs to tell everyone!” Anya exclaimed. “If people knew the truth—”

“The three of you aren’t telling anyone anything. You’re about as subtle as a parade in the streets.” Aleksei pointed at Cobie. “And I wanted a word with you. You kept that knife.”

Cobie put a hand to her thigh above the hemline of her shift, where I suspected she’d bound it up. “I won’t be defenseless, Aleksei.”

“If Sunset had searched you, you’d have been killed,” he said tightly. “The tsarytsya would not have hesitated to spill blood over breakfast. They already call you kikimora upstairs.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

Aleksei gave a dry laugh. “Kikimora is a household spirit, a vicious one. She does ‘women’s work’”—here he drew quotes around his own words—“but in a terrible temper, and always poorly.” Then he rounded on Anya. “You, the soldiers call vila. Nymph. Fae creature.” He cleared his throat. “Be careful, please. All of you.”

I didn’t have to ask what I was called upstairs.

Zolushka. Ash-girl.

I didn’t care. At least the ashes were warm, in this tower of cold stone and colder people.

“I can radio Perrault again,” I said. “I can warn them about the tsarytsya’s impending attack, and see where our reinforcements are.”

“Reinforcements?” Aleksei asked. I explained quickly that Perrault was pleading with Alfödr, seeking contact with the resistance through Gretel. “I told him about Zatemnennya. I said the city would be in chaos. Whatever we do, we’ll do it that night.” Escape—or something more.

“And I expected to be the hero, leading the charge to rescue you,” Torden said, half teasing.

“You’re a formidable army on your own, but I’d rather improve our odds.” I bit my lip and looked up at him. “Do you need to go home, if the tsarytsya is coming?”

“No,” Torden said quietly. “This will not take me away. I will never leave you again.”

I didn’t think. I stretched up to kiss him again, wrapping my arms tightly around his waist.

“Good grief,” Aleksei groaned, passing a hand over his forehead. “You two are back to being absolutely useless now that you’re together.”

I stuck my tongue out at him, and Torden squeezed me tighter.