56

Blood was everywhere. Blood and jewels and coins and broken stone.

I scrubbed it away with Midnight crowing over me. She went on and on about Perrault in her prisons, Perrault betraying me. She never mentioned any of the others.

Did they still live? Were Torden and his drengs suffering? I would push for their immediate release when it was time to serve the tsarytsya the next day; Baba Yaga was sleeping off her long, bloody night and was not to be disturbed.

Aleksei came to the kitchens that night as Anya and Cobie and I were scrubbing the blood off our hands and knees. “Well done,” he said. I nodded, and sat before the oven.

The tsarytsya had no need to marry me to anyone; I’d known this. I had counted on amusing her by my brashness, and by insulting Midnight. I’d also counted on her believing she’d found a way to manipulate Aleksei.

I had thought carefully, and very, very quickly.

I had had three aims with my plea.

The first had been to tell the tsarytsya that I was ignorant. She would never reach Potomac’s shores; Sunset’s armies were spread impossibly thin as it was. But I’d indicated I didn’t know that and given her an opportunity to preen in front of her people to boot.

The second had been to align myself with her selfishness—to show her I cared only for Potomac, as she cared only for Yotunkheym.

The third had been to allay her fears that Norge was involved. If Torden was here for me, without Konge Alfödr’s permission, it meant he wasn’t here to do reconnaissance; he represented no threat from the Shield.

I’d feared she would smell my deceit.

Still, the last piece of my plan had been the most essential. I was lucky Aleksei was such a talented liar. I’d known he was scheming alongside me as soon as he relaxed at my side.

Like the jade-green snake tattooed around his upper arm, he’d shed his skin again.

“You knew she wouldn’t be able to resist, if she thought she’d found my weakness,” Aleksei said, flopping down on the hearth. “You led her to think I loved you.”

I shrugged dully. “I didn’t have anything she wanted. I had to make her think marrying us would allow her to manipulate you.”

I’d had nothing to bargain with. But I’d turned out my pockets and bought Torden’s safety with what little I found.

“Thank God Gretel didn’t send in the resistance,” I said. “It would’ve just been more lives lost. More people captured.”

Anya stared into the oven. “Do we know where she’s keeping the boys?”

“She’s trying to conscript them, for the moment,” said Aleksei.

“The more fool she,” Anya said bitterly. Cobie nodded.

Aleksei scratched the back of his neck. “You could try to contact Gretel now that Wolf Night’s past,” he suggested.

Cobie shook her head. “We’ll never be allowed in her rooms again.”

“And besides,” I said, “Midnight’s secret police have radios. They’re listening in all the time. Midnight told me.”

“Would’ve been smarter if she hadn’t.” Cobie rolled her eyes.

“I know,” I agreed. “I might have tried again, but she wanted to get a dig in.”

Midnight and her shortsightedness. She would sacrifice a lead without a second thought, all for a moment’s gratification. She would never learn focus.

An idea began to buzz low and insistent in my veins.

“What we need,” I said, “is someone capable of seeing past the end of their own nose. Someone who actually cares what happens to this city. Midnight is petty; that’s her undoing.”

Cobie frowned. “Selah, you’re speaking in riddles.”

I swallowed hard. “We need the Rusalki.”

There was silence in the kitchen. Aleksei stared at me, looking tired enough to tip over.

Anya left the hearth and began to pace. “You heard what they said. They will hate Aleksei and the rest of us forever. They will never work with us.”

“They don’t care about us. Not really. That’s the thing.” I shook my head.

I thought again of Momma. She’d been dogged, devoted. She’d taught me and disciplined me and loved me with everything she had.

The Rusalki wanted their children. If they had to pull the city down with their bare hands to take them, I believed they’d do it. Who they allied with was irrelevant as long as their children were safe when nothing was left of the Mortar but rubble.

“Did you not see the knife at Aleksei’s throat?” Cobie demanded. “They’ll kill him!”

“We can wait,” Aleksei said urgently. “We can bide our time. Marry, watch, wait for a chance to get ourselves out.”

I fought my cringe at the word marry. “Except Baba Yaga could change her mind at any time and kill all of us,” I fired back. “Torden, the drengs, the Beholder crew.”

Anya and Cobie both tensed.

It was cruel of me to press on their worries—for Skop, for Will. But we couldn’t forget that their lives hung in the balance of our choices.

“We cannot trust her,” I insisted. “She’s a Wolf and she’s made it clear that rules—hers and everyone else’s—are made to be broken. How long is the tsarytsya going to wait, watching her armies dwindle, before she does something worse?”

Anya hesitated. “We don’t know how to find them.”

“But they know what they want,” I said. “And one of us managed to keep his hands clean last night.” I fixed Aleksei with a stare.

He sat back, shaking his head. “I can’t go to those women. I can’t. They won’t—”

“You have to,” I bit out. “Aleksei, you’re the only one of us left. If you don’t, we will be married in three days and Cobie and Anya will be trapped here forever and Baba Yaga will get her claws into your home and mine.”

Aleksei said nothing for a long time. Then he looked up at me, tears in his eyes. “The Rusalki won’t speak to me. The tsarytsya stole their children. And I stole their childhood, because she told me to, and I was a coward.”

“Tell them your plan,” Anya said. “Tell them how you’re going to help them get their children back. How if they and the Vodyanoi and the Leshii take Stupka-Zamok, they can take their sons and daughters home, to the wild or elsewhere in the city or wherever they want.”

“Do we have a plan?” Cobie interjected.

“The wedding!” Anya said, decisive. “The maids have been talking. It’s going to be a massive affair. People will be distracted and the city will be swarming again.”

The wedding. My wedding.

I had set out in search of that day, had left my home and my father behind to quest for it, had marked the days in ink and ash as I waited for it to come. And now that it was near, I wished I could scrub it out of existence, like blood off stones.

Aleksei sat on the hearth and cried in silence. With his head bowed and his shoulders shaking, he looked little older than one of the children in his ranks.

When he was finished, he lifted his head, tears streaking his face. “I sold my soul,” he said.

“So help these women.” I put my hands on his shoulders. “And buy it back.”