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I shake his shoulder, then the ice hits my veins.

Alya.

If my father is dead, if someone has breached the estate—

“Alya!” I scramble to my feet, slipping slightly in the slick red on the floorboards. “Alya!”

I sprint back into the hallway, throwing open the door to the study. Empty.

“Alya, where are you?!” I run up the main staircase, my hands slick with our father’s blood, smearing it against the white banister as I tear through the upper corridor.

“Alya, answer me!” I scream, kicking her bedroom door open.

“Please,” I choke out, a sob tearing out of my chest, turning me into a panicked, frantic child. Suddenly I am a child again, standing over my mother’s casket. “Alya, please, if you’re hiding, come out! It’s me! It’s Ilya!”

I spin around and bolt back down the stairs, skidding into the lower gallery that connects the kitchen to the conservatory.

I stop in the middle of the hallway, gasping for breath. “Alya—”

CRACK.

Pain. My head hurts.

My knees give out beneath me, folding like paper. “Ah… ugh…”

My vision is swimming in gray static. I manage to drag one trembling hand up to the back of my head. When I pull it away and bring it into my blurry line of sight, it is dripping in bright red.

I force my neck to move, but every millimeter feels like pulling glass through muscle. I roll onto my side, pushing up on one elbow, blinking against the black spots swarming across my eyes.

A pair of white sneakers stands two inches from my face.

I drag my gaze upward. I see two pale hands gripping the rubber handle of a steel framing hammer.

The head of the hammer is dripping with my blood.

Drip.

Drip.

I force my eyes higher.

Green eyes meet mine.

“A…?” I wheeze, then the hammer comes down on me again.

Ilya

It’s raining. It’s so cold.

My skull feels like someone has driven a rusted iron railroad spike between my parietal plates and stirred the bone fragments with a screwdriver.

I force my eyes open. The world is a smear at first, but I blink it away as I drag one arm beneath my chest, trying to leverage my upper body off the rock.

“Don’t stand up too fast, brother.” The voice is light. Melodic.

I look up. Standing three feet in front of me is my reflection.

Alya.