59

I staggered and fell, my ears ringing, and Aleksei threw his narrow body over mine. When the earth stopped shaking, I raised my head.

The air was full of smoke. I choked on it, lungs aching. A few feet away, the tsarytsya lay prone, blood trickling from her temple. Midnight was out cold.

Aleksei hauled me up and pushed me toward the door in the roof that would take me downstairs. “Go.” There was more strength in his skinny arms than I would have guessed.

I glanced back. Sunset was coughing, pushing herself to stand, bloody palms leaving red prints on her knees. “What are you going to do?”

Aleksei pushed me toward the door again. “Follow you.”

We had to shove before it gave; the explosions had rocked the frame of the building. I stumbled through the door and raced down the stairs, gray uniforms jostling past, not seeing or caring who I was in their rush to get out. All around me people shouted, wailed, coughed in the smoke, pressing and pushing on the narrow iron stairs.

I had foreseen this. I had foreseen what a hellscape this tower would be, if Baba Yaga’s enemies ever breached her gates.

I hadn’t imagined that I’d be inside when it happened.

Two floors down, someone pushed a man over the railing. He fell the remaining ten stories and struck the flagstones with a sound that made me sick.

Somehow, Aleksei kept a level head through it all, pushing ahead of me and seizing my wrist with his skinny fingers. He threaded through the crowds like a needle through fabric, weaving and winding and dragging me along behind him. My head spun and the stairs creaked and I stumbled more than once, but Aleksei never let me go, never lost his cool.

Finally, we reached the bottom floor. Aleksei shoved me toward the front door as he raced toward the basement. “Go!” he screamed over his shoulder. “I’ll find Cobie and Anya.”

I watched his retreating back, frozen in place. And then the explosions began again.

A rumble, and a scrape, and a stone crashed from the ceiling. It smashed to the foyer floor and pinned a man beneath it.

My stomach lurched at all the blood. Smoke rose, thick and heady, around us.

The crowd swam, bodies pressing, nails scratching. Someone pushed me, and my knees hit stone; an elbow hit my back, and I lay flat on the floor. Heavy boots trampled my shoulder and arm.

I was going to die here, as surely as if the tsarytsya herself had ordered it. Blood flowed from my mouth, from my cheek, from my knees. A screaming pain wrenched through my ribs.

But when I looked up, there she was.

Dark hair spilled over Wash’s shoulders, and blood poured from a cut on her forehead. “Selah! What are you doing here?” She tugged me close to the wall, out of the crowd.

“I fell.” Tears stung my eyes.

“No. No! Do not cry! Stand!” Wash bent and helped me up; blood dripped from her wound.

I held as tight to her as I could, our backs against the stone wall, our shoulders pressed together. The foyer was a churning sea of bodies. The air stank of fear.

Wash prayed under her breath, and I did the same.

Please, God.

Her eyes were huge on the door and her hand was tight on mine. She said something in Yotne, then shook her head, searching for the word in English. But she glanced up at the ceiling, and I knew what she meant. We had to get out before the whole place came down around us.

Wash held up a hand, five fingers. Dragged in a long, shuddering breath.

Four fingers. She wiped the blood pooling at her temple with the back of her hand.

Another breath. The crash of rock not far away.

Three fingers, an arm around my waist.

Two. My arm around hers. Please God please God please—

One.

We pushed off the wall, heads down.

We drove toward the door, a two-woman battering ram. Wash’s breath grated through her teeth, and I let out a guttural howl, more wolf than any Wolf in Baba Yaga’s house.

We burst into the battle raging outside.