Dangerous Games

3

Then I hear my mother’s voice in my head, chastising me as she used to do when I was a child.

Self-pity is a luxury people like us can’t afford, Evalina. Don’t ever feel sorry for yourself. It’s the most useless of emotions and the most addictive of drugs. Spend too much time wallowing in your sorrows and you’ll drown.

“I won’t drown,” I promise the dead dog, my voice the weakest whisper. “And I swear Dimitri will pay for what he did to you.”

I’m going to make him pay for everything he’s done, to everyone.

The distant wail of sirens fills the night. I’m aware of people nearby, talking to one another in shocked voices, a small crowd of neighbors gathering to find out what all the noise is but not daring to get close. I look up the stairs just in time to see Dimitri stumbling down them, holding his side, his face contorted in pain. Bodies of men are piled on the landing, but two of Dimitri’s soldiers are still standing. One of them slings Dimitri’s arm over his shoulders and supports him as they descend. The other, a few steps ahead, makes a beeline for me.

He picks me up and throws me over his shoulder.

I groan and almost pass out from the pain, but manage to stay conscious.

“Hurry!” shouts Dimitri.

The soldier carries me across the street to a parked van. Upside down, I catch a glimpse of the stairs, expecting Naz to emerge from the open doorway of the apartment, but there’s no movement up there. He’s not in the window, either, peering out at us, and the sound of his voice doesn’t echo through the night.

A bolt of anguish slices through me like a sword.

No! Naz! NO!

I hear the sound of a heavy door being thrown open on metal rollers, then the soldier tosses me into the back of a cold, dark van. He slams the door shut behind me. It closes with the hollow finality of a lid sliding onto a coffin.

I look around frantically. There are no windows. Thick wire mesh extends from floor to ceiling, caging me into a few cramped feet of space.

I find the strength to shout Naz’s name into the darkness, but my shout is met only with the sound of more doors opening and closing at the front of the vehicle. When the van’s engine roars to life, I holler his name at the top of my lungs, hoarse and desperate, my heart banging against my rib cage, terror burning like wildfire through my veins.

With a squeal of tires, the van lurches forward. Dimitri’s voice comes to me from the front of the van, but it might as well come from my worst nightmare.

“You can forget about him, Evalina. He won’t be coming after you anymore. He’s dead.”

We speed off into the night with Dimitri’s dark laughter the soundtrack to my screams.

TWO

EVA

We drive. For a hundred years, or so it seems in my frigid cocoon of darkness. All the while, I hyperventilate, curled into a ball, my eyes wide open and staring at nothing as my mind runs on a hamster wheel of horror and denial.

Naz can’t be dead. Dimitri’s lying.

But Naz would never let you go if he were alive.

He must be injured. Yes, that’s it—he was injured and couldn’t make it to the door in time to follow us. He’ll come for me soon. He’ll always come for me. He promised he’d always keep me safe.

You fool. Dead men can’t keep promises.

Eventually, the van jerks to a stop. Doors open and close. Men’s voices murmur somewhere outside, then the back door slides open.

The soldier who threw me into my cage now takes me out, handling me with more care than before when he sees the ugly angle at which my arm is bent. I cradle it against my chest and allow him to help me climb out and get my footing.

We’re at a small airfield in the middle of a plain that stretches as far as the eye can see into blackness, a blackness that matches the color of my soul. A gleaming jet awaits a few dozen yards away with its engines running and airstairs extended down to the tarmac.

The soldier says, “Go on. He’s waiting.”

He visibly winces when I look up into his face. I must look like death. The thought gives me a morbid sort of satisfaction.

I don’t bother trying to run. There’s nowhere to go. I’m headed to my fate, a destination no one can escape, and everything good I may have had is far behind me.

Maybe not everything, whispers an urgent voice inside my head. There’s no proof Naz is gone, but even if he is, you might have his child inside you. Don’t give up yet.

I close my eyes, swallowing around the rock in my throat. Anguish wells up inside me, making it almost impossible to breathe. Of all the terrible things life can throw at us, surely the worst of them is hope.

“Gospozha?” says the soldier.

The English equivalent is “madam.” It’s a sort of honorary, a polite form of address for a woman, and the thing I was always called by Dimitri’s underlings in my former life as his favorite.

I guess some things never change.

But some things do.

I’m no longer the girl I was before. The girl who ran away from a monster and fell in love with a god. I have blood on my hands and a wasteland in my heart and the memory of Naz’s beautiful smile branded on my mind, a memory Dimitri Ivanov is going to regret I ever formed.

Because it’s the fuel that will drive me forward until the moment I burn his whole world to the ground.