20
DANCING
Sasha swung wide around the stream, keeping to the trees, the wind in his face concealing his own scent, while bringing to him that of a young stag drinking at the streambed.
He’d hunted before – and he’d been successful – though now he wasn’t sure how. Now he could hear the squelch of mud beneath hooves; could smell the mustiness of dander as the deer shed his winter coat and the new spring hair pushed through. He swore he could hear the animal’s thoughts, as he crouched in the underbrush with his pack.
He knew his alpha female was going around to the left, one of his strong beta boys to the right. They would close in –
Now. The stag threw his head into the air, nostrils testing the air. He snorted, once, and then leapt into the water, plunging across…
Straight into the heart of the pack.
He carried no gun. There was no keeping still, holding his breath, lining up his careful shot. It was nothing like hunting had always been. His mind shut itself away. And the wolf came out.
Cold air in his lungs. Scent in his nose. Ground underfoot. Wind in his hair. Jump, leap, grab, grip. Knife in his hand. Heat and press of his pack around him. Blood on his tongue.
When he came back to himself, he stood over the steaming body, his pack looking up at him with red, smiling jaws.
“Good,” he crooned to them, bent down and slung the stag across his shoulders. It didn’t seem to weigh a thing.
~*~
It was a cool day, but sweat trickled down her sides beneath her uniform shirt. She’d folded the sleeves back, and she could see the fine hairs on her arms standing on end. Sweat beaded at her temples, burned at the corners of her eyes. Her palm, though, was dry and sure around the handle of her combat knife, her gaze unwavering as she watched Kolya, turning to keep up with him as he circled her.
Before the war, before all of this started, she would have fainted at the sight of him. Even now, with months of sniper training under her belt, she felt her stomach tremble with nerves.
Ivan was the biggest, but Kolya was without question the most threatening. His was a quiet, controlled menace. In his black trousers, and shirtsleeves, and boots, a knife in each hand, watching her from dead, dark eyes not unlike those of their wolves…he looked like he planned to kill her.
She wasn’t sure he wouldn’t.
“Now,” he said, and twirled the knife in his right hand. Forward grip. Then reverse. Then forward again. “The thing to remember is: don’t watch the knife, watch the man.”
She nodded and tightened her hand on her own knife.
“You’re watching the knife.”
And she was, damn it, because he kept twirling it, letting the sharp edge catch the light. He was trying to distract her, and it was working.
“Watch me,” he said, and then lunged toward her.
Katya jerked back, tripped over her own feet, and promptly fell on her backside in the dirt.
“Oh,” Pyotr said, concerned.
Ivan snorted.
A quick glance at Nikita showed his face to be carefully guarded.
Kolya moved his knives into one hand and held the free one down to her. There was nothing kind in his expression, but he said, “Everyone falls a few times. Get back up.”
Pride wouldn’t allow her to quit, so she took his hand and let him pull her back up.
He stepped back and let her compose herself, dust off her pants, wipe the handle of her knife on her shirttail.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He circled again, and this time she watched him, and not the flashing knife. Watched the way he walked on the balls of his feat, poised and ready. Noted the tension in his spine, and the looseness of his arms. He wasn’t just a fighter, she realized, as she saw the way his calves flexed inside his gaiters, the way he carried himself.
“You were a dancer,” she said, and knew it was true because he staggered to a sudden, clumsy halt.
“What?” he asked, flatly, but she saw his pulse beating in the big vein in his throat.
“You were,” she said. “You move like one.”
“And what were you? A whore? You move like one,” he shot back.
“Kolya,” Nikita said.
But Katya didn’t care. She’d struck a nerve, and she intended to keep plucking at it. “Farmer’s daughter, actually,” she said. “And I only spread my legs when you black-coated bastards forced them open. You can’t be a whore if you don’t get paid.”
“You could be a bad one.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have bothered.”
“It wasn’t me,” he said through his teeth.
“Just your friends, then.”
He lunged, but this time she’d been watching him, and she was ready.
She dodged – only to have him come at her from a different angle. She ducked, backpedaled. She kept her feet, but just barely. He was a dancer, she saw now, and a fine one at that. Lightning-quick and light on his feet, it took every ounce of concentration to watch his body and predict its moves. Inevitably, she forgot all about the knife.
She spun away from the slice of one, and stopped short when she felt the kiss of the other against her throat. She froze, breath catching.
She heard the soft sound of the other knife going into its sheath, and then his hand caught her arm, twisted it around behind her back. His breath rushed hot in her ear, voice tight with anger, but approving. “Better. Needs work.” Then he let her go.
Katya pressed a hand to her throat – not a scratch, only the wildly beating rhythm of her pulse. She sucked in a deep breath and realized, to her shame, that she’d dropped her own knife.
“Pick it up,” Kolya said. “We’ll go again.”
She took another steadying breath, and reached for it.
~*~
Sasha could hear the voices of his human pack members a long ways off, and the sound brought a smile to his face as he hiked the last distance up the hill to the pine-ringed clearing where they’d camped the night before. They’d said they would begin Katya’s combat training today, and clearly that was still in progress, if the barked instructions and sounds of effort were anything to go by.
“Again,” Kolya said. “Lower, there, yes.”
Feliks let out a grunt and Katya murmured something low and pleased with herself.
The wolves started to trot, tongues lolling, happy and relaxed as they started up the hill. All but the alpha female, who stayed close at Sasha’s hip.
Like Sasha, she’d picked up on Monsieur Philippe’s burned-toast smell.
“Bonjour, Monsieur,” Sasha called, and the man stepped out from behind a tree, smiling, small clean hands folded together in front of him. The rest of them were all dirty and bristly and smelly from their trek – Sasha hardly recognized his own wild reflection when he looked into streams and puddles – but Philippe was always tidy and composed, his long fur remarkably clean; there wasn’t even any mud at the hem.
“Good morning,” Philippe said. “I see you had a successful hunt.”
“It’s spring. Game’s plentiful – and not careful this time of year.”
Philippe’s smile twitched at the corners, curling up into a sly smirk. “Love is bewitching. And nothing male is immune to it, I’m afraid.”
Sasha had reached him now, and came to a halt, adjusting the carcass on his shoulders.
The alpha female growled quietly.
“What do you mean?” Sasha asked.
“Nothing, nothing.” The old man waved away the concern. “I’m sure the others will be hungry and ready for venison steaks. They’ve been busy this morning.”
Sasha nodded, his earlier happiness returning. “I can hear them.”
“Don’t let me keep you.”
Once they’d passed him, the female snorted, a clearly derisive sound.
“I know,” Sasha murmured to her. “But I don’t think we have a choice.”
At the top of the rise, the trees thinned, leaving a plane of dry, pine needle-covered ground perfect for pitching tents…and learning how to spar. Sasha lowered the stag to the forest floor and watched a moment.
Feliks had put Katya in a headlock, but it wasn’t a perfect one, and she knew it, too, wriggling and bucking against his hold. She elbowed him in the solar plexus and when his grip spasmed, she bit his hand.
“Ow, damn it!”
She slid out from under his arm, whirled, and aimed a kick at his crotch.
“Hey!” he protested, flailing to cover himself…and leaving his face exposed, her open-handed slap catching his cheek with a satisfying smack. “Fuck,” Feliks said, with feeling, and stepped back, rubbing his face.
Katya was breathless, red-faced, and smiling. Smiling in a way Sasha hadn’t seen yet, and it made him smile too.
“Good,” Kolya said from the sidelines, nodding with approval. “Closed fist with a real opponent, though.”
“Yeah,” Katya said, pushing loose tendrils of hair off her forehead, trying to get her breath back.
“Or stab his eyes out with your fingers. He can’t kill you if he can’t see you.”
“Okay.”
“Are your balls alright?” Ivan asked Feliks with faux concern.
“Fuck you.”
The big man burst out laughing.
Pyotr smiled and shook his head as if to say what can we do with these hopeless idiots?
And Nikita…
Nothing male is immune to it, Monsieur Philippe had said, and smirked, and Sasha understood now. Nikita probably had no idea that his face was full of softness, and fondness, and longing as he watched Katya. It might not have been love he felt toward her, not yet at least, but it wasn’t simple lust. There was too much admiration in his gaze for that.
Sasha smiled, overcome by a sense of good, and right. Nikita was many things, lonely and guilty and miserable chief among them. He loved his brothers-in-arms, Sasha knew, and felt that love turned toward him, too. But some wounds could only be healed by the intimate, hot-blooded love between two people, the kind that lived in the spirit and the body.
No one could ever sneak up on him again, and so he knew that Philippe walked up silently behind him, the burnt smell of him acrid against the clean tang of pine sap.
“If our good captain becomes distracted,” he said, “then it will fall to you to lead us, Sasha.”
A few months ago, Sasha would have protested that he was only nineteen, not even his own man yet. But now he was the pack’s alpha, so he only nodded.
What he didn’t tell Philippe was this: he would gladly accept that burden; it was high time Nikita had a chance to rest.
~*~
Nikita understood the mechanics of gutting and skinning an animal carcass, but he’d never done it himself, and watching Sasha do it now, he didn’t care to. It was nasty business, but one that Sasha conducted with expert movements and no fuss, tossing choice bits to the wolves who sat in a circle around him, drooling and waiting. He’d set his cloak, and jacket, sweater and shirts to the side, skin bone-pale in the spring sunshine, steaming slightly with the effort of moving the dead stag around and carving him into steaks. The scar where Philippe had stabbed him was a thin, angry pink line across his pectoral. A physical reminder that he’d died…and come back different.
“Cold?” Sasha asked, and Nikita realized he’d been drifting.
Sasha stood in front of him now, a haunch of venison in each hand. “You shivered,” he prompted, head tilted to the side, assessing.
“Just a chill,” Nikita said, taking the meat from him. It was heavier than Sasha made it look. “Thanks. I’ll put these on the fire.”
“I’ll bring the rest.”
It was early evening, still light, the spring chill just starting to take hold. The others were ranged around the fire that Kolya had built. Katya sat alone opposite Pyotr and Feliks, tired-looking, but pleasantly-so, sharpening her Army-issue knife with one of Kolya’s whetstones.
Nikita pierced the haunches on the spit above the flames and then sat down beside her.
She acknowledged him with a low, hummed note but didn’t look up from her task.
“Sore?” he asked.
“Mm. Yes. Worse tomorrow, I expect.”
“Yes.”
He watched her fingers, their understated confidence of motion.
“He really was a dancer, wasn’t he?” she asked, voice low.
Nikita let his gaze wander across the fire to Kolya, where he sat with Ivan, drinking vodka and sharpening his already-perfect knives with another whetstone. “I don’t think it’s my place to tell his secrets.”
When he glanced back at her, she smiled softly down at the knife. “I can tell that he was. You don’t have to say.”
She had a smudge of dirt on her cheek, and tired shadows beneath her eyes. He’d never seen anything so lovely. “What he said before,” he started. “He’s a good man. He didn’t mean it, not really. He–”
“I know he didn’t.” She sighed, shoulders lifting and dropping, the motion taking some of her constant tension with it. “I think.” She set the knife aside on the pine needles at her hip and rolled the stone around in her hand. Wet her lips. “I think maybe all of you are.” Sent a careful, sideways look toward Nikita that punched him straight in the gut. In a small voice: “I want to believe that.”
He swallowed, throat suddenly tight. He wanted a dozen absurd, impossible things, things he had no right to want from her, a girl who’d been raped and dragged into a war. “We’re not like the ones who…who hurt you. That I can promise.”
She nodded and glanced away. “I’m sorry I said that.”
“Maybe you should apologize to Kolya.”
“I will.”
~*~
She was sore, and the deep ache of her muscles intensified as it grew colder, and as dark fell. It was a welcome discomfort, though, the soreness of physical exertion and learning important skills. She felt more capable and less fragile now, more comfortable with the weight of her knife in her hand. As the Germans had proved a few days ago, she couldn’t rely solely on her sharpshooting skills – the enemy might not give her a chance to use them.
On the fire, the venison had turned an appealing deep brown on the outside, crispy at the edges, the savory scent making her stomach growl. Fat dripped off the speared meat and landed in the coals with hisses and splatters.
The wolves sniffed appreciatively, yipping at one another.
The dark closed in around them, an owl hooting in the distance, but she wasn’t afraid. With the warmth of the fire on her face, and the wolves keeping watch, and the men who…who were becoming her friends…and Nikita, who was becoming someone who stirred butterflies in her stomach…she was content for the moment. Sleepy. Hungry. None of this seemed strange or horrible or insurmountable.
Monsieur Philippe was telling a story in response to Pyotr’s hesitant question about other bodarks being nearby.
“Not now, I’m afraid,” he said with a regretful sigh. “The social structure broke down. By the turn of the century, there were only a handful of awake, acknowledged vampires left, and most of them had lost their Familiars – that’s what mages and wolves are, you understand. Familiars.”
“Like a witch’s cat?” Pyotr asked.
Philippe smiled. “I daresay it’s a bit more official than that, but yes, if it helps to think of it that way. In any event, the wolves who are left – if there are any – are hiding. The oldest and most famous wolf abandoned his master in rather spectacular fashion in 1867. He’s the one who sold me the wolf book, interestingly enough.”
Sasha, surrounded by his wolves, perked up visibly, eyes brightening. “He’s like me? Where is he?”
Philippe smiled kindly at him. “He’s a wolf like you, yes, Sasha, but he lacks your sweetness of spirit, to be sure. His name is Fulk le Strange. He’s a baron, actually: The Baron Strange of Blackmere. English, originally. He was always thought of as cold and cruel, very buttoned-up. Heartless, they said. I guess all facades have to crack, eventually, and his did. He turned a human woman, took her as his mate, and fled from America after the end of the Civil War.”
“I thought wolves couldn’t–” Sasha started, frowning.
“They can’t, to my knowledge. They aren’t powerful enough. But Baron Strange did.” He shrugged. “He and his baroness have been globe-trotting for decades, now. It was a stroke of pure luck that I was able to run him down, and that he was willing to sell me the book. I suppose he has no more use for it; what would be the point of keeping it?”
Sasha wasn’t listening anymore, his gaze faraway. “Wow,” he breathed. “He has a mate? Who isn’t…” He gestured to the wolves around him. The rangy omega licked at his hand.
Philippe’s face took on a careful sadness.
“Like him? Who he can…” The hope in Sasha’s face sent a stab of sympathy through Katya’s chest, strong and bitter as grief. She hadn’t thought of it like that before – but Sasha clearly had. He was just a boy, and a happy one at that, content with his wolves and his friends who he clearly loved, his bodark-side as transparent as glass when it came to his affections. But all living things wanted mates, didn’t they? She might not have thought that a few months ago, but right now she was achingly aware of the length of Nikita’s strong thigh pressed against hers as they sat too-close together on the rotted log they used as a bench.
“Even if le Strange hadn’t gone into hiding,” Philippe said with obvious regret, “he would be an outcast. A loose cannon. For wolves – werewolves – it’s unnatural to take a true mate.”
“Please,” Ivan scoffed. “Everybody fucks. That’s the most natural thing in the world.”
Philippe sent him a placating smile. “For mortal humans, yes, of course. But Familiars aren’t entirely human, and the laws of nature don’t apply the same way.
Ivan stared at him, slack-jawed. “You’re telling me superpowered people who live forever don’t fuck? What’s the point of living forever if you can’t get laid? Jesus Christ!” Belatedly, he turned to Katya and said, “Uh, sorry.”
She waved him off.
Philippe’s smile was starting to look strained at the edges. “Of course he can. But we’re talking about mates. That’s an entirely different thing than…fucking.” He said the word with obvious distaste. “Wolves like Sasha aren’t designed to be a part of a pair. It’s not who they are.”
It was silent a long beat after that, only the crackle of the flames and the calling of owls.
Sasha looked down at this lap, fiddling with a hangnail.
“Well.” Kolya stood up and reached to pull the meat off the fire. “Who’s hungry?”
~*~
They ate in hungry silence, the grease on their hands shining in the firelight. Katya was even more ravenous than she thought, choking down unladylike mouthfuls and only stopping when she realized that it would take longer for her stomach to catch up with her mouth, and that if she didn’t stop now, she’d be uncomfortably full later. She passed the rest of her meat off to Ivan, who could eat twice what any of them could and still be hungry, and then sucked the grease from beneath her nails, enjoying the warmth of the fire and of Nikita’s body beside hers.
When Kolya stood up and walked away from the fire, she realized it was her chance to make good on her promise to Nikita, and she stood a few moments after, excusing herself, and followed him.
The cold shocked her a little, when she was clear of the fire, insistent as it closed around her, compressed her lungs. Spring, even on the steppe, was winter’s cruel little sister, and she reminded Katya that she’d forgotten her coat.
Oh well. She didn’t think this would take long.
She kept a good ways back, listening to his rustling footfalls, trying not to make any noise of her own – which was hard, because he walked carefully, quietly. A dancer, yes, for sure.
Two dozen feet ahead of her, he came to a halt beside a tree, braced one naked, white hand against the trunk, and then stood there, breath pluming silver in the moonlight. Belatedly, she thought he might have come out here to take care of necessary business. Soldier though she’d become, she’d rather be spared the indignity of that.
But he stood. Still as a statue, staring off into the shadowy tree trunks.
The moment stretched; she imagined she could see his thoughts arcing and leaping through the dark, tongues of lightning. He was thinking so hard she swore she could feel it, goosebumps rising on her arms.
She should leave. Whatever he’d come out here to dwell on, he’d clearly wanted to be alone. Thoughts too precious for the crackle of the fire and the voices of his brothers.
She turned to go…and stepped right on a twig.
Damn it.
It snapped beneath her boot and Kolya whirled, face seeming too pale in its frame of long, dark hair.
Katya froze.
“What do you want?” He sounded more uncertain than angry.
That bit of rawness in his voice made her feel awful for spying. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude or…” Anxiety bubbled in her chest and she tried to let it out with a sigh. She realized she was more frightened of him now, after the sparring session, than before – back before she’d known he could snap her neck without effort. “I wanted to apologize. For what I said earlier. Making it personal. I’m sorry.”
A small voice in the back of her mind told her to walk away, now that she’d said what she needed to. But she waited, rooted to the spot, and so she could see him blink in obvious surprise.
“I called you a whore,” he said, disbelief in his voice. “Why are you apologizing to me?” It was such a vulnerable statement – from any man, but especially from a state-owned thug – that she couldn’t help but read the vulnerability in it. She felt a softening toward him, a touch of warmth in her chest.
“I struck a nerve. And I was trying to. I shouldn’t have done that.”
He shook his head, one strong back-and-forth motion. “Nothing makes it alright to say what I said.” In an undertone: “I was raised better than that.”
The thought of him as a child, a boy with parents who taught him manners, put a smile on her face. He was so cold and stern and unreachable…but he’d been little once. Had sat on his father’s knee and felt his mother’s hand through his hair. Hopefully.
His head lifted and his eyes – a faint glimmer in the dark – found hers. “No one’s ever guessed that I danced. Nikita told you?”
“No. He said it wasn’t his business to tell.”
It was hard to tell, but she thought the shadows on his face shifted, one corner of his mouth flicking up in a quick, humorless smile. A silent thank you to his captain and friend, she thought.
“How did you know?” he asked.
“You glare like a killer…but you move much prettier than that. You’re very light on your feet in a way that most men aren’t.” In a way the Chekists who had come bursting into her home hadn’t been, boots heavy across the floorboards, hands rough as they…
Don’t think about it.
He gave her another of his not-quite smiles. “Yeah. I was a dancer,” he said. “A good one.” And then all the tension bled out of him and he slumped sideways, exhausted from holding onto the strain. Quietly, he added, “My mother was very proud.”
When he didn’t elaborate – and she was shocked he’d admitted as much as he had – she cleared the sudden catch in her throat and said, “Do you miss it?”
“Every day.”
The wind out here, in the wild, had a way of constantly sighing and whispering, threading through the tree trunks in cool tendrils.
It slipped between them now; Katya imagined it eased the strain of admission.
“I was never very good,” she said, because she thought she needed to offer her own admission, “but it was fun.” Back when she’d been just a girl, on the swept-clean floor of a barn, the rest of the village gathered under lantern light, precious oil burned so that they could drink, and smoke, and laugh, and twirl one another inexpertly around. Just so they’d have something to look forward to. Stolen moments of joy.
It surprised her when he straightened away from the tree and offered her his hand, palm-up, moonlight cupped in the little hollow there. The lines were deep, holding shadows, the calluses rough to the eye, even in the dark.
“What?” she asked.
The light caught his teeth as he grinned, a fast gleam. “You’re only as good as your dancing instructor, and you’ve clearly never danced with anyone as good as me.”
A startled laugh tickled up her throat. “You don’t have to.”
His smile slipped a little. “I miss it, remember?” Quiet, rough, self-conscious.
How could she refuse that?
She laid her hand in his and immediately his fingers closed around hers and he stepped out into a clear space between the tree trunks, whirling her along. She let out a startled gasp, afraid she’d fall, but he swung her into place in front of him, other hand landing, steadying, on her hip.
And they were dancing, just like that.
“Oh,” she said, after a moment, following his feather-light steps across the ground as best she could. Because he knew the steps, yes, and executed them well, but he obviously wasn’t trained as a ballroom dancer. His movements were more ethereal than that.
“Ballet, yes,” he said, as if reading her mind, smile wry…and also proud. “Until I was eighteen.”
“You waltz very well,” she said, a little breathless with the speed and smoothness of his turns, trying valiantly to keep up.
“So do you.”
She made a dismissive sound.
“I never lie about dancing,” he said, seriously.
And for the first time in a long time, a real, bright, from-the-heart smile broke across her face, almost painful because the muscles there were so unused to the expression.
He smiled back, and suddenly he was handsome, and not frightening at all. What a life he might have had, if not for the war, if not for their damnable government.
What a life they all might have had.
He spun her out one last time with a flourish, reeled her in, and dipped her. Her stomach gave a little flip and she grabbed tight to his arm for balance, but she was proud that she didn’t trip or make too big a fool of herself.
He righted her carefully, made sure she was steady, and then stepped back. His smile began to fade immediately, but there were lingering traces of warmth in his face, eyes sparkling.
“Thank you,” he said, quietly, and she knew he meant it.
She curtsied, fingers pinched at the edges of an imaginary skirt.
“Thank you, sir.”
She heard a sound off to the right, a quiet rustling.
Kolya glanced that way and said, “Ah. I think you’ll be alright to walk back.” He bowed and turned away.
Her confusion lasted only a moment before a white-faced, black-clad figure stepped out from behind a tree and approached her.
Nikita.
Her cheeks were already warm from dancing, but she felt them grow warmer. She reached to tuck her hair back, errant strands that had escaped her braids. Her heart started to knock in a way that it hadn’t when she was dancing with Kolya. It had been exercise, before, but now her pulse pounded for another reason entirely, one she wasn’t sure she liked.
He wasn’t smiling, but his expression was soft. He drew to a halt in front of her and together they listened to Kolya walked back to the fire, and then Ivan’s loud greeting as he rejoined the others.
“Sometimes,” Nikita said, low, “when he thinks no one else is around at the office, he takes off his boots and goes through his old positions.” He finally smiled. “I haven’t seen him do it in a while.”
“Oh,” she said, nervous suddenly, feeling, for some reason, like he was complimenting her. She would have blushed if she wasn’t doing that already.
“Thank you for being kind to him.”
“Why would you thank me for that?”
His smile twisted, grew sad. “We aren’t the sort of men who inspire kindness in those around us. We don’t receive it often.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him of course you don’t. Every Russian knew what the long black coats and black fur hats with the hammer and sickle represented, and not even the most loyal to the Communist Party held an ounce of love for the Cheka.
But she’d softened toward them at this point, seeing them as men first, and Chekists second. Dangerous. But unavoidable.
“You don’t like what you do,” she said, and it wasn’t a guess so much as something she’d come to know.
He shrugged. Glanced away.
“Then why do you do it?”
He snorted, eyes coming back, look saying really? “I do what I have to so that I can–” He caught himself, biting his lip a moment.
“Serve your country?” she guessed.
He shook his head. Said down to his boots: “So I can stay alive long enough to save it, maybe.” He breathed a humorless laugh. “That sounds incredibly arrogant.”
“Save it from the Nazis?”
“It needed saving long before the Nazis crossed the borders.” He sent her a level look…touched with fear. Just a flicker in his eyes. “Nicholas wasn’t even tsar anymore, and they dragged his children from their beds and shot them all in cold blood. Slaughtered them. What sort of government does that?”
It all slotted into place, then. She thought it did, anyway. She sucked in a breath.
His look dared her to challenge him. There, I finally told you, it said. What do you think now?
“My father,” she started, careful, “always said that sometimes you had spill the blood of oppressors. But,” she rushed to add when his eyes flared, “this, Communism, is worse than anything the tsars ever did. And what they did to the Romanovs was wrong. I do believe that.”
He let out a breath, visibly relieved.
“But it’s more than that to you, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s personal. You’re a White.” And now that she said it, it made so much sense.
He leaned in close, suddenly, in her face, his breath hot. “If you go running back to base and tell anyone–”
“I won’t. I would never.”
Not even the owls dared to breach the silence that descended then. Her heartbeat was loud as artillery fire in her chest, rushing through her ears. Her pulse knocked so hard she didn’t think she could have run away, or ducked, or even brought a hand up to shield her face if she needed to, all her energy focused on not passing out from the sheer force of her thumping heart.
But she didn’t need to do any of those things.
Nikita let out a shaky breath and leaned back from her, reaching to wipe a hand down his face. She heard the rasp of his bristly chin against his palm. “It’s going to get me – get all of us – killed one day. What’s one more admission, huh?”
“I won’t tell anyone,” she repeated.
He cocked his head to the side, studying her. “Do you think me a traitor?” There was just enough moonlight, and his head was tilted at just the right angle, that she could see his pulse pounding in the hollow of his throat, a rapid flutter in the silvered gloaming.
“I…no. Not really.” She didn’t tell him that, in truth, knowing he wasn’t loyal to the state – to the black-clad monsters he represented – eased some last bit of worry inside her. She frowned, though. “You’re pretending to be a Chekist.”
“Yes.”
“All of you?”
“Yes.”
A beat passed, and she let that sink in. “But the people you kill – that’s not pretend. That’s real.”
His jaw clenched, shadow leaping in the side of his face. “We’re not like the others. Raping women and children. Killing just for fun.” He spat the words, disgusted. “We collect the things we’re sent to retrieve, and we only kill when ordered to. Someone would kill those people anyway – better a quick, clean death than the torture someone else would inflict.”
“That’s a convenient way of looking at it.”
“It’s also true.”
And…it was. She guessed. Who knew. Fuck everything.
“You could have joined the war effort as a nurse. A secretary. Why become a sniper? A soldier?”
And here was her ugly truth: “Because I’m angry all the time,” she said, without any remorse. “If I can’t kill the men who took my family away, I’ll kill every other Nazi stupid enough to walk into my sights.” She was breathing hard by the end, and her throat hurt when she swallowed. But her eyes were dry.
Ivan’s laugh floated toward them from the fire, loud and delighted.
Katya tightened her arms across her middle and shivered from a sudden chill. “So,” she said.
“So.”
It was quiet a moment, and then he said, quietly, “My mother was a part of Alexandra’s court. One of her maids of honor.”
Surprised, Katya blurted, “Really?”
“Really. She had to change her name, hide who she really was, take a factory job.” His smile was pained. “When I was a boy, she always came home smelling of cologne. I knew she didn’t like what she did, but I didn’t understand what that meant until I was older. Her hands” – he turned his own over and studied the moonlight that pooled in them – “were cracked and bloody from the cold; there was always machine grease under her nails. But that was just hard work – that wasn’t like the bruises on her arms. Her throat.” He touched his own, reflexively, gaze going somewhere beyond her left shoulder.
“I saw her once,” he continued, “getting out of the bath. We rented a room in another family’s flat – Pyotr’s family, actually – and everyone was always on top of one another. I saw the bruises, and they were blue and shaped like fingers. I didn’t know what they meant, then. But when I was sixteen I finally worked it out of her that it was her foreman. Forcing her. Every day after her shift ended.” He was speaking through his teeth, now. “He gave her an extra loaf of bread, a wheel of cheese sometimes. Food she brought home for me, so I could grow ‘big and strong,’ she said. She had three miscarriages, and I think she did it to herself, somehow. I…” He shook his head. “She didn’t want his babies, and I don’t blame her. I.” His hands curled into fists, and his eyes came to hers, suddenly, fever-bright. “When I was sixteen, and she finally told me, I went down to the factory after hours, and I beat him to death, slammed his face into his own desk until his skull split open like a melon.
“He owed an officer money, and I was still standing over the body, bloody up to my elbows, when the Cheka walked into the office.”
She took a deep breath.
“They congratulated me. Asked if I wanted to join. I had a skill, they said. And no one refuses the chance to join. So.”
Katya exhaled slowly, feeling shaky inside, like she hadn’t eaten yet. “So,” she repeated.
“I didn’t come out here intending to tell you all that,” he said, a bit awkward.
The internal shakiness intensified, a shiver along her bones and veins and nerves. “Why did you come out here?” she asked, voice unsteady.
The smile he gave her was different, wry curves in the corners, bashful almost. “I. Um. Well.”
“Oh,” she said, understanding. Felt her blush return, warmer than before.
“But,” he said, shifting his weight back and forth. “I. Well…it doesn’t matter.” He started to turn away.
But she could tell that it did matter to him. And though her heart raced with a frightening mix of fear and anticipation, his unexpected awkwardness flattered her. Any other man might have grabbed her and demanded what he wanted. Respect – regard as a person, and as a woman – might have been the most basic of expectations, but in her short life of greed, and violence, and war, and violation, it felt heavy and important. Touching.
She grabbed at his sleeve. “Nikita.” She thought it was the first time she’d said his name aloud, and it seemed to affect him, the way he went still, and then slowly turned back to face her. “Thank you for telling me all of that,” she said, meaning it. And then, because she felt compelled to reassure him in some physical way – and because she needed it, too – she stood up on her tiptoes and circled her arms around his neck in a careful hug.
A more experienced woman might have kissed him – and maybe that’s what he was expecting. But though she’d been subject to horrors, she’d never learned how to kiss properly, and, self-conscious, she pressed her face into the shoulder of his coat, hiding her face. It smelled of the woods, and campfire smoke, and a whiff of cordite. Wolf. And of man, something low and spicy that belonged just to him.
He kept still a moment, and then his arms closed around her, strong and warm. Comforting.
She felt his face against her hair.
“We should go back before it gets any colder,” he urged, voice quiet, not wanting to break the spell.
“Yeah.”
The warmth of the embrace lingered, though, even after they separated and walked back to camp hand-in-hand, his fingers finally sliding away from hers when they entered the fire’s ring of light.