Blood and Water - The Darkling

Chapter 20: Hope

*Trigger warning: violent death

*Unedited

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𝕰𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖞 muscle in my body tenses, "What?"

"There are ... there are rumors that he put it to the torch."

"Alina—" Mal says.

I don't even have the energy to spend on his blatant lack of concern for me, "Ivan, Fedyor, Inessa, Mikhail, and Luka?"

"And the students," Alina adds, her panic matching mine. "What happened to the students?"

"We don't know," Tamar replies.

I can't process this.

"Your key," Alina says, her breath coming in harsh gasps.

"There's no reason to believe—"

"The key," she repeats, hearing the quaking edge in my voice.

Tamar hands it to her. "Third on the right," she explains softly.

I follow Alina's heels. We take the stairs two at a time. Near the top, she slips and bangs her knee hard on one of the steps. I barely register it. I stumble down the hall, counting the doors. My hands are shaking so badly, same as my twin's. It takes her two tries to fit the key in the lock and get it to turn.

The room is painted in reds and blues, just as cheerful as the rest of the place. I see Tamar's jacket thrown over a chair by the tin basin, the two narrow beds pushed together, the rumpled wool blankets. The window is open, and autumn sunlight floods through. A cool breeze lifts the curtains.

I slam the door behind me and walk to Alina by the window. She grips the sill and I her hand, vaguely registering the rickety houses at the edge of the settlement, the spindles in the distance, the mountains beyond. I feel the pull of the wound in her shoulder, the creep of darkness inside her and therefore me. She launches herself across the tether, seeking him, the only thought in her mind: What have you done?

I do nothing to stop it.

With my next breath, we are standing before him, the room a blur around us.

"At last," the Darkling says. He turned to us, his beautiful face coming into focus. He's leaning against a scorched mantel. Its outline is sickeningly familiar.

His gray eyes are empty, haunted. Is it Baghra's death that left him this way or some horrific crime he'd committed here? For I refuse to believe it's simply because he misses me.

"Come," the Darkling says softly. "I want you to see."

I try to stop my trembling but it doesn't work. Almost automatically, I let him take my hand and place it in the crook of his arm, Alina still gripping my other one tightly. As he does, the blurriness of the vision clears and the room comes to life around us.

We are in what had been the sitting room at Keramzin. The shabby sofas are stained black with soot. Ana Kuya's treasured samovar lies on its side, a tarnished hulk. Nothing remains of the walls but a charred and jagged skeleton, the ghosts of doorways. The curving metal staircase that had once led to the music room has buckled from the heat, its steps fusing together. The ceiling is gone. I can see straight through the wreck of the second story. Where the attic should have been, there is only gray sky.

Why?

Why? And how? How could he?

"I've been here for days," he says, leading us through the wreckage, over the piles of debris, through what had once been the entry hall, "waiting for you both."