And then my steps falter.
Before I get to the village, I have to go past the cemetery. It’s as picturesque and gothic as the rest of the village, and I’ve always enjoyed the melancholy feeling it gave me as I walked past.
But today, Eva’s car is parked at the cemetery gates.
What is shedoinghere? The question burns through me, followed immediately by a pull of curiosity I can’t resist. I should mind my own business. Should explore the village again, reintroduce myself, maybe find a place where I can sit and pretend I’m just a normal tourist—not that I’ve ever seen a tourist in the village.
Instead, I find myself swerving toward the cemetery.
Eva once told me that the cemetery is older than the village itself, and I can believe it, based on its weathered headstones and elaborate monuments telling the story of generations buried in mountain soil. Ancient trees reach across the stones, and the air carries the scent of earth and flowers.
I’ve never been in here before, but it’s not hard to find Eva. She and Leon are standing before a large stone crypt near the back of the cemetery, its heavy doors carved with intricate patterns. The name etched into the weathered stone over the doors is written in an unfamiliar script, but I still know what it says.
Novak.
Eva holds a small urn in her hands, her head bowed in a posture I’ve never seen from her before. Vulnerable. Human. The morning light catches the clouds of black hair framing her face,and for a moment she looks less like the predatory queen who rules from her castle and more like a daughter saying goodbye to her father.
Because that’s what this is, of course. The urn she holds—it has to be her father’s ashes.
Leon stands nearby, his hard face softened by something that might be grief. His usual stoicism has cracked just enough to show the man beneath the bodyguard. He’s mourning too. Zoltan Novak wasn’t just Eva’s father—he was Leon’s employer, maybe even his friend.
Something twists in my chest. Sympathy, pity, or maybe something more dangerous. I should leave. Should give them privacy for this intensely personal moment.
But I can’t seem to make my feet move, transfixed by the sight of Eva’s carefully constructed walls crumbling in the face of grief.
As if sensing my presence, Eva’s head lifts suddenly. Her eyes lock onto mine across the headstones and her expression hardens in an instant. That vulnerable woman disappears, replaced by the ruthless queen I know so well.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she snaps.
The words should send me running. Instead, I walk closer, stand next to her, turn to face the crypt. “Would you like to say something for him?” I ask softly.
For a moment, Eva looks like she might snarl at me again. Her jaw tightens, and I can see the internal battle playing out in her expression—the urge to lash out warring with something deeper.
Then her eyes drop back to the urn, and her voice becomes small. Raw.
“I don’t...” she begins, then stops. When she speaks again, it’s in her native tongue—low, halting words that sound like prayers and apologies all at once. I don’t understand the language, but I understand the emotion. The love. The regret.
And the vow of vengeance. I understand that, too.
I see Leon nodding along.
When Eva finishes, Leon opens the crypt for her with a key, and she disappears into the dark depths without another word. I see a flame gutter and grow strong from inside, but then the heavy stone door groans shut, and I’m left standing with Leon in the quiet.
He gives me a brief nod—not quite approval, but something close to it. There’s a flicker of curiosity in his dark eyes as they meet mine, as if he’s trying to figure out what I am to his employer. What my presence means.
“She loved him very much,” I say quietly, not sure why I feel the need to fill the silence.
“More than anything,” Leon confirms. “Except maybe...”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, but his gaze lingers on me meaningfully.
When Eva reappears minutes later, her mask is back in place. She walks past me without acknowledgment, her spine straight and her head held high. But I catch the redness around her eyes, the self-soothing motion I remember from the hospital as she smooths down her coat.
Leon locks the crypt again. For a moment, Eva meets my eyes once more. There’s something raw and unguarded in her expression, gone so quickly I might have imagined it.
She’s not just a monster, I think reluctantly. And oh, how I wish she was.
Because monsters are simple. You run from them, you fight them, you survive them. But a grieving daughter who cradles her father’s ashes? A woman who promises vengeance to the dead and looks at me like I might be the solution to her grief?
