No warning.
No pain.
Just sudden, absolute black.
Chapter 6
ELENA
My eyes opened to moonlight and dirt.
The air was sharp with cold, carrying the faint tang of iron and crushed leaves.
I was sprawled on cold, packed earth, every muscle trembling, the metallic taste of blood thick on my tongue, a reminder of how close I had come to the edge. I rolled to my left—and froze.
A deep rectangular hole gaped beside me, six feet long, three feet wide, freshly dug. The walls were straight, sheer, almost surgically precise. The soil at the edges was loose, freshly upturned.
My stomach lurched. I rolled to my right. Another identical grave stared back at me like a silent accusation.
I scrambled to my feet, heart hammering so hard it throbbed in my temples and teeth.
Sweat beaded on my forehead despite the chill.
The moonlight revealed more. The graves formed a perfect circle around me—eight, maybe ten—each one a silent promise, a vow that I might not leave. No ladders. No ropes. No escape except through one of those dark, yawning holes.
Only then did I see him.
Ruslan sat at the edge of the circle, low wooden stool beneath him, posture flawless despite the casual way he rested one elbow on his knee.
The moonlight poured silver over him, turning his white shirt luminous, casting hard shadows beneath his cheekbones, chiseling his jawline.
His curly hair caught faint starlight; his eyes, storm-gray and unblinking, locked onto mine with the patience of a predator who already knows the outcome.
His presence pressed against me, heavy and suffocating, a mixture of quiet power, old grief, and a cold, meticulous rage.
He looked like a king holding court over a battlefield that had already been won, the trophies of victory surrounding him.
“I warned you,” he said, voice low and even, resonant enough to vibrate the air around me. “If you run. If you call for help. If you make a single misstep... you will regret it.”
He lifted something from beside the stool—a small ceramic urn, cream-colored, smooth, unadorned, like the ones funeral homes use for ashes.
“This is your mother’s,” he said, holding it delicately as if it were glass. “The one you’ve spent years searching for. The one they told you was lost forever in the crash. A remembrance, yes?”
My chest caved in.
Air left me in jagged, desperate gasps. I had begged mortuaries, coroners, insurance agents—anyone who might know—for her remains after the crash that had taken her plane.
Fire had consumed everything, they said. Ashes scattered. Nothing left to bury. Nothing tangible.
“How...?” My voice rasped out, barely more than a breath.
He didn’t answer. He tilted the urn slightly, catching the moonlight on its cream surface so I could read the faint inscription etched into the base: Catherine Vasquez, Senior. Beloved Mother.
I staggered back a step, breath leaving me as a wave of memory crashed over my senses—sharp and sudden, unbidden, painful and comforting all at once.
The kind of memory that didn’t ask permission. The kind that took.
I was nine years old.
