The snows had stopped when Yuri returned to Goldwater Port. Instead, the world had frozen over in a layer of gray, soot scattered black over ashes.
He wound his scarf more tightly around his neck and held out his hand, igniting a small flame in his palm as he made his way through the city. The once-colorful streets of his childhood town were dark and empty, glass from shattered windows and debris from dachas crunching under his boots as he walked.
It was the first time he’d been back since the day of the Imperial Inquisition four weeks ago, and the sight of his massacred town was something Yuri would never forget. He and the rest of the Redcloaks had hidden in a shelter in the Syvern Taiga, not daring to communicate with Goldwater Port in case the Imperial Inquisition was watching their base. Yuri had been waiting weeks for his mother to send a snowhawk signaling that the town was clear.
When the silence had stretched on, he’d resolved to check on the state of things himself.
Yuri turned a corner and came upon the first body. It was frozen beneath a layer of snow and ice; the light of his fire illuminated the dead man’s face, still cast in midscream, the muscles now slack.
He lifted his eyes and found an entire street of corpses.
The fire in his palm sputtered, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe. He recognized the faces of the dead; he’d grown up with them, visited them during his rare trips home from the Salskoff Palace.
The local baker, sprawled in the snow, his limbs bent at odd angles.
The old potato seller, her throat gashed open.
The ironsmith, dead in a puddle of his own blood.
Panic beat a drumroll in his chest, and he began to walk faster, taking long, steadying breaths to calm himself. He had just turned down the street to his dacha when he sensed the shadows around him deepen. From the edges of his firelight, a figure peeled away from the walls. Ice cracked under his boots as he approached.
Yuri could only stare at the figure standing before him. The light from his flames licked at the boy’s face: skin the brittle porcelain of a sickle moon, eyes the color of a familiar darkness.
Yuri slowed to a stop. “Seyin? What are you doing here?” Seeing his former Second brought to mind the correspondences they’d had, the strict admonishments Yuri had written. He’d stripped Seyin of his title and stopped short of expelling him from the Redcloaks.
“We need to talk” was all the former Second said.
Yuri couldn’t fathom why Seyin had ridden all the way to Goldwater Port. Even more, he couldn’t fathom why Seyin hadn’t told him about coming. “We can talk inside,” he replied, making to move forward.
But Seyin stayed where he was, hands stuffed in the pockets of his cloak, his face half-shrouded in his hood.
A feeling of foreboding crept through Yuri. “Seyin, get out of my way.”
The other boy’s dark eyes glimmered; shadows warred across his face. “No,” he said quietly.
Yuri walked forward. Seyin made to block him, but Yuri shoved him out of the way. He heard Seyin’s grunt as he hit the ground, but he didn’t care. He began to run.
He could barely breathe from the pounding of his own heart, from the fear that squeezed his throat so tight, he thought he would throw up. No communication from Ma for weeks, returning to a ghost town, Seyin showing up out of nowhere…His mind was blank, his steps beating a frenzied rhythm ofno no no no no no no—
The truth awaited him when he reached the entrance of his home.
The glass of his family’s restaurant was broken, the shards buried under layers of snow and ash. The inside was dark, tables overturned and chairs smashed against the walls. Only the moonlight filtered through, illuminating silverware and blankets and personal belongings strewn across the floor, as though someone had gone through the contents of his entire home.
But Yuri’s gaze was drawn to a silhouette lying in the middle of the restaurant. Drifts of snow had settled on the floor, but he could make out the shape of a body, the faded red kirtle crumpled where she had fallen. A lock of red hair spilled from her bun, dangling across her back.
Everything inside him broke loose. “M-Ma?” His voice came out in a cracked whimper.
She didn’t stir.
Yuri scrambled forward, the world swaying around him. He was vaguely aware that he’d dropped to his knees, the glass and shattered porcelain on the floor slicing through his breeches and his palms as he crawled forward, leaving a trail of blood across the floor.
“Ma?” he gasped, and when he reached out to sweep the snow from her arms, her skin was ice-cold. His hands shook, hovering over her. “Ma,” he begged, and then he was sobbing, calling her name over and over again into the silence all around.
Hands closed around his shoulders, pulling him back, speaking his name. Yuri yelled and shook them off, crawling forward to where Ma lay—
And then she disappeared. Where she had been, there was only empty floor, snow lying in drifts across wood.
Yuri turned. Seyin knelt beside him. There was something like anguish on his face. “Yuri,” he began, but something cracked in Yuri. Suddenly, the hollow space in his chest was afire, his head splitting from the heat, his vision red.
