The new Serpent’s eyes shine like black ice. “Ksenia said you killed him.”
I fold my arms, my heart banging as hard as the hailstones against our invisible ceiling. “Are you seriously trusting the word of the homicidal bitch who just planted a dagger inside your heart?”
Mestyla’s forehead pleats around her retracted tusk.
“Isla didn’t murder Svyato, Mestyla. In truth, we’re not certain who did,” Vance says calmly.
A tear trundles down her colorless cheeks.
“I promise to help you find his killer later,” he says. “But first, you need to tell us what happened between you and Ksenia. Why did she kill you?”
Mestyla presses her now-brassy tresses off her wet cheeks. “I came to the capital to meet my uncle. Ksenia convinced me her brother would kill me on sight, though, so I stayed hidden. She promised we’d come out when it was time.
“Tonight, someone knocked on the bunker door and told us it was time. I thought I was going to find Konstantin sitting on one of the sofas.” Mestyla wrings her fingers in her lap. “Ksenia laughed at me when I mentioned this, then explained that I would get to meet him, but not around vodka and canapés. That’s when she explained that she’d tried to make him see reason, but he’d been brainwashed and blinded by a Crow. Byit was time, her subordinate meant everyone was in position inside the castle.”
My ears begin to roar with a thunder of my body’s making.
“Inside…?” I cannot even get the rest of my iteration out.
“Ksenia’s militia infiltrated the castle,” Vance murmurs.
My blood rushes, jumbling the beats of my heart. “How?”
“I heard them speak about an underground railway,” Mestyla says through chattering teeth.
“Theinboundtunnel entrance is sealed with a blood-lock.” Vance’s emphasis on ‘inbound’ isn’t lost on me—departure is unrestricted, but entry is rigorously controlled.
The news should ease my trepidation, since blood-locks are intricate protection sigils that must not only contain the spellcaster’s blood but also the blood of those given access to whatever has been sealed away.
“Who possesses a blood-key?” I croak, as lightning flares, bleaching the land and the Serpents.
“From what I heard,” Vance says, “Konstantin and Salom. But there must be others.”
My heartbeats swell so violently that my tongue feels crafted from solid iron. Dádhi said Salom wasn’t the enemy—what if he was wrong?
As theories coalesce in my skull, I swirl toward the castle that glows yellow against the polar night’s blueness and the storm’s whiteness.
Both trains had departed the castle this afternoon—Ilya on one, Milana on the other.
Were brother and mother part of Ksenia’s coup?
Did they possess a blood-key?
Had they boarded the trains in order to collect rebels and transfer them into the belly of the castle?
45
ISLA
“Milana, Ilya…” Since my heart is presently lodged inside my throat, their names come out garbled. “They took the trains out this afternoon. Are they—” I lick my lips. “Are they part of Ksenia’s insurrection?”
“No. Only that arms dealer, Bohdi,” Mestyla says, burrowing her trembling hands beneath her thighs.
That arms dealer…She mustn’t know he’s her biological father, but he must know she’s his daughter since Ksenia was frightened of retribution. Unless she was faking it? Unless Bohdan has no idea he fathered this girl?
A frown forms on Mestyla’s forehead as she pulls one hand out from underneath her thigh and holds it up.
“What is it?” I ask while Vance squints at the forest that’s no more than a dark smudge.
