Our fingers brush, and the ice under my chest gives way in stages, cracks racing outward from where I’m lying. The section I’m on is breaking off from the rest, tilting toward the black water, and if I grab her hand, I’ll pull her down with me.
“Anya.” I look at her face, memorize it, the way her hair falls across her cheek, and the shape of her mouth, and the grey of her eyes that’s the same color as Moscow winter. “I need you to listen to me.”
“No.” She’s crying now, reaching further, her fingers stretching toward mine. “Don’t you fucking dare say goodbye—”
“Mishka needs you.” The name cuts through her stubbornness, and she flinches. “The formula, the antidote, all of it needs you. You can’t save any of them if you’re dead.”
“I don’t care about any of them.” Her voice breaks. The ice is cracking louder now, the whole section starting to tip. “I care about you. I need you. I can’t—”
“Yes, you can.” The ice lurches, and I’m sliding backward toward the hole that’s opening behind me. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known. You poisoned me, saved me, and killeda dozen men in the last three months. You don’t need me to survive.”
“I don’t want to survive without you.”
I see the crack racing toward her. If she touches me, we both die.
“Live,” I say. “For me.”
And I shove the ice away.
My palm hits the fractured section between us, and I push with everything I have left, pushing myself backward toward the hole, pushing the cracking ice away from where she’s kneeling. The force of it sends her sliding back across the solid ice, away from the edge, away from me.
She screams.
It’s the worst sound I’ve ever heard, worse than my family dying in the church, worse than the men I’ve tortured, worse than anything I’ve done in thirty-two years of becoming a monster. Her hands grab at empty air where I was, and the ice shelf collapses under me, and I’m falling.
Water.
Cold.
Dark.
The current takes me, and I’m spinning, tumbling, can’t tell up from down or left from right. My lungs are burning, and my shoulder is screaming, and my gut is leaking warmth into the cold, and somewhere above me, she’s still reaching, still screaming my name, still not running like I told her because she never does, she never fucking listens—
I love her.
I promised to protect them all, and I’m failing, I’m dying in a frozen fucking river because I stepped in front of a bullet meant for my wife.
I’d do it again.
I’d do it a thousand times, a million times, I’d die every day for the rest of eternity if it meant she lives.
The current takes me. Darkness closes in.
Vadim wins.
The empire burns.
I don’t care.
She lives.
Solnyshko.
ANYA - Moskva Riverbank, 23:37
The river swallows him, and I’m already moving.
“ANYA, NO—”
