52

“I nearly pissed myself,” Aleksei hissed as he and Torden entered the kitchens that night. “You, howling like a wolf? You’re too good at it.”

“You nearly wet yourself?” I demanded in a whisper. “I’m the one who had to figure out how to beat a military genius in a game of military strategy!”

“How did you manage it?” Anya asked idly, rubbing salve into her wrists. The pot of ointment had appeared before the oven a couple weeks before.

No one admitted to having left it. But Wash’s eyes had darted back and forth from her cooking to the salve several times before I opened it, smelled it, and realized what it was. The skin around Anya’s wrists, relieved that day of their shackles, had begun looking infected before; now her skin looked tender but healthy.

I would never be able to repay Wash for all the debts I owed her.

“I’ve become fairly light-fingered since we started working here,” I said wryly. “Cleaning a fireplace quietly enough that Polunoshchna doesn’t scream at you is quite the experience.”

“She put them in her sleeves,” Aleksei said dryly to Torden, miming cuffing his own. “Twenty or thirty claws, right off the board. Chattering nervously and distracting the tsarytsya and the general while she lifted them right off Sunset’s terytoriy so she could take them more easily.”

Torden stared, disbelieving, at me.

“I needed to win,” I whispered.

“What were the stakes?” Anya asked, crossing her arms. “Who lost?”

“I think I did,” Aleksei said, shrugging. “But without Polunoshchna at the table, I think the only price was my dignity. Which I had little enough of anyway.”

Anya sniffed, unappeased.

“Enough,” Cobie said. “Zatemnennya is in three weeks. I couldn’t hear what Gretel told you. What’s our plan?”

“Gretel and Baba Yaga called it a night of lawlessness,” I admitted. “The Wolves can take what they will, and if they still possess it by morning, it’s theirs.”

We stared at one another for a long moment.

“Let’s sit,” Torden said. As the banked fire in the oven smoldered, he told us what he’d done.

He had come to Stupka-Zamok with about forty drengs in total, and they had seized a small fortress-house on the edge of town upon their arrival. “We didn’t hurt anyone,” he reassured me. “The owners will be restored full possession of their home when we’ve gotten you safely away.”

I arched an eyebrow at him, and he blushed.

“I didn’t like it, either,” he mumbled. “But we had to have a base of operations.”

Aleksei rolled his eyes and waved his hand. “Enough, get on with it.”

“The doors to Stupka-Zamok will be unbarred that night,” Torden continued hastily. “We have stolen an additional three Imperiya uniforms. After the three of you have changed into them, we will move from the castle to the house and pretend that we are claiming it. My drengs and I will defend the house until dawn, and we can escape the city.”

“And that should work?” Anya asked, anxious.

Aleksei scratched at his nose. “It should. If the night is as chaotic as the tsarytsya described, we ought to pass unnoticed.”

For all my bravado before the tsarytsya, my stomach clenched at the risk we ran.

Worst of all, I didn’t want to flee. I didn’t want to leave Wash and Vasylysa and every other innocent in this tower to Baba Yaga’s mercies. I didn’t want to abandon Yotunkheym’s children to a life in the little pestykk. But without help from the resistance, I didn’t know what we could do, and Gretel had—fairly enough—refused to help.

It was a beautiful dream. If the Leshii and the Vodyanoi and the Rusalki could take the city that night, would it, too, remain theirs come morning? Or would that be yet another of her own rules Baba Yaga would break?

“We’ll have to stay together,” Torden said fiercely. “I’ll find arms for the three of you, and we’ll make it to the house. It’s barely a mile away.”

“Twenty minutes.” Cobie’s gaze was fixed on the fire. “We’ll find out if we can survive twenty minutes running with the wolves.”

Torden stayed late again that night, hiding away with me in the laundry. I laid my head against his shoulder, basking in the warmth of the fire, in the warmth of him.

He was solid ground in a world of shadow and fog. In a world where I was an ash-girl, burned by fires I had not set.

“Are you worried?” he asked softly, running his fingers through my hair.

“I wish we were doing more,” I confessed, meeting his eyes. “I wish I could help the resistance take this city, instead of running away from it. And I’m worried that the Beholder’s crew are walking in blind.”

Torden hissed a breath through his teeth. “They don’t know?”

“I couldn’t raise Perrault. Unless he happened to be listening on the wire when I spoke to Fritz and Gretel and just couldn’t respond because they were too far from a tower.”

Torden studied his hands, as if trying to puzzle out a secret behind their freckles and scars. “Why not Captain Lang?” he finally asked. “Why have you been speaking to Perrault?”

I pursed my lips.

Because I don’t want to be cut out of my own rescue for my safety.

Because somehow, plans with Lang always become a competition.

“Because Lang is complicated,” I finally said.

Torden nodded, still staring down at his fingers. “Do you wish he were here instead?” he asked softly. “Am I the rescuer you wished for?”

I drew back, reaching for the ring in my hair and unbinding it from its braid.

“Ask me again,” I said. My throat was tight.

I held the ring out to him, its blue stones glinting in the dim light of the fire.

“You want me to—”

“Ask. Me. Again,” I said slowly.

Torden wet his lips and took the ring. He rolled it between his shaking fingers. “Selah, am I the one you wished for?” he whispered. “Will you marry me?”

I held out my left hand.

“Yes,” I said.

Such a short word. It felt larger than my whole body.

“Yes,” I said again, reveling in the power the word bore. Torden slid the ring onto my finger. I took his face between my hands and kissed him. “I will.”

The next morning, after I prayed my Rosary, I began marking the days again. I stepped out of the closet and greeted Wash as she began to cover her hair and rinse her hands, took a burnt lump from the oven, and marked in black ash a row of tick marks on the oven’s side, counting backward as best I could.

Midnight would mock the soot on my hands. I wondered if she would still call us ash-girls if we burned their world to the ground.

When I was done counting, I studied the line of scratches. We had been in the witch’s house for sixteen days. We would remain twenty more.

My breath came heavy, angry, at the time that had been stolen from me. Time I could have spent with my father, with Torden, in Potomac.

Grandmother Wolf had taken it. I would give her no more.

Time felt shorter than ever. When we left the tsarytsya and her generals at breakfast, we raced upstairs.

Cobie shut Baba Yaga’s bedroom door, facing it with her knife out, and began to count down from eight minutes. Anya tore around the room, refreshing linens with inhuman speed.

I strode instantly to the radio. Torden had given me a frequency to use.

“Hello?” I asked the silence.

Nothing.

“Hello?”

“What is our heart?” asked a voice in struggling English.

“Ash,” I said, without hesitation.

Ash, he’d said, so very long ago. It is Asgard’s rune. All our blood wear this over their hearts.

“And what is our journey?” asked the voice, as Torden had said it would.

“Reid,” I answered.

And this—he’d pointed inside his left wrist—is Reid. It means ride, the work and the journey of our lives.

“Very good. To whom am I speaking?”

“I’m Selah, seneschal-elect of Potomac. If Hermódr is at Flørli I need to speak to him immediately.” Torden had told me his older brother spent many of his days at the fortress, keeping watch over the fjord and overseeing radio transmissions.

Seven minutes, Cobie mouthed to me.

I’d had no luck last time, failing to reach Perrault, rebuffed by Gretel. I hoped for better fortune today.

“Selah?” Hermódr burst out over the radio. My heart rose as I nudged the volume down.

“Softly, Hermódr,” I cautioned him, even as I wanted to sing out with relief. Hermódr was Torden’s steadiest brother, the wisest and most discerning son of Asgard, its best politician. I could rest easy with my message in his hands. “Look, I’ve only got a minute. I need you to listen carefully. Do you know where the Beholder has gone?”

“Yes,” Hermódr answered immediately. “The Beholder sailed the day after you spoke to Perrault. Pappa declined to send aid, I’m sorry to say. Torden took as many of his drengs as would flout our father’s orders just days before your people arrived, and he would transfer no more.”

My heart raced. “But they sailed the next day?” I breathed. They could be here soon. If we could find them—but how? And what if they walked into Zatemnennya unawares?

Four minutes, Cobie mouthed, holding up as many fingers.

“That’s probably for the best, anyway,” I said quickly. “Hermódr, we suspect the tsarytsya is preparing to attack Asgard.” As simply as I could, I explained what we had found in Baba Yaga’s office—the evidence she’d been gathering her zuby in the Upper Northern division of her ranks.

Hermódr sucked in a sharp breath. “Do you know when?”

“No,” I admitted, pinching my lips shut. “The moon cycle,” I said suddenly. “The lunar cycle is significant to the tsarytsya and her people, almost to a spiritual degree. She may attack the night of the lunar eclipse, or maybe the night of the next new moon or full moon.”

“That makes sense.” Hermódr’s voice warmed. “Thank you, Selah. Thank you for warning us. You may have saved lives.”

My voice turned wry. “Let your father know I’ll be collecting on this debt.”

Hermódr laughed. “Give her hell, Selah.”

“Stay safe, brother.”

I shut off the radio, returned the radio to its original frequency and volume, and turned to Cobie and Anya, heaving a sigh.

“And now,” I said, “we watch, and we wait.”