•••
SHE HADN'T left him, not really.
She'd only wanted him to believe it, but Milena couldn't stay away from the blood and gore. Their energy was magnetic, pulling her toward them as if with some sort of unseen force. Sat on the stairs, she ran her hands along the bannister, slick with blood, before reaching into her mouth with a handkerchief and wiping the guts from her teeth. They'd returned back to normal by now, but the sickening feeling of flesh between them was fading agonisingly slowly. Every breath made her want to throw up, sickened by what she'd done.
She'd wanted to give him a chance, she really had. But that chance hadn't arrived until it was too late. She still couldn't find the room to regret killing Dimitri, though. He was a thorn in her side, with all his childish prejudices and foolish witchhunts. The real monsters were right under his nose, and he was off chasing pretend ones that his murderer of a father had told him, mere fairytales. Dimitri Sorenov had forgotten that life was not a fairytale and that there were no monsters that hid under beds, and fashioned himself a hero. A hollow one, with nothing in his brain apart from hatred.
Almost like me, Milena thought resentfully, standing up and spitting on the gnarled wood floor. A cloud of dust went up in the dank air, and she stifled a cough. Pouring her long, bedraggled hair over her shoulders, she began to brush through it with her fingers, the blood on them now dried and brown. Looking at it, she almost felt ashamed. As much as Dimitri had it coming, as much as she didn't regret killing him, she thought of what her father would say, before realising the painful truth.
Her father did not care, and he never had. It had always been like that, even though she'd tried, tried so desperately. She did everything he wanted, but it was never enough. Every time that she put her own emotions aside to please him, broken the boundaries that she'd set up for herself and sinned more than any child ever should've. At only eight years old, she'd done worse things that many people would've been scared to do at the ends of their lives. For her father, she'd walked to the ends of the earth, and he'd rewarded her by burning his own daughter alive.
The skin where the burns snaked up her thighs tingled, and she shivered, a chill seeping through her body. She could still, if she blocked out her other thoughts, smell the sickening stench of burning flesh. It filled her lungs until she felt the need to splutter them up, coughs racking her body.
Creak.
A footstep, tiny and indistinct, but nevertheless still there. Milena gritted her teeth, standing up abruptly. It had come from upstairs, she realised, where there were only two rooms. Yaga had not been as subtle as she'd evidently intended to have been, though from that Lena had gathered that she'd managed to heal herself, in some kind of way, at least. It meant that she was able-bodied enough to move, and therefore, fight.
To Lena, every move that was not fighting was a wasted one.
Creak.
Lena drew her knife, starting up the stairs. Despite being armed, she knew very well that weapons were pointless, After all, the battle that would soon arise would be one of wits and powers that did not rely on skill. She needn't know how to throw a knife any more than anything else, for it would be as everything else - useless.
A sob tore at her throat suddenly, for no particular reason at all, and she let out a small choked sound, eyes streaming. She wanted to sit down alone and cry, cry until there were no more tears remaining.
She would not cry for her father, dead in a so-called accident years ago, nor for her mother, dead in childbirth. She would not cry for her brother, out to find fortune in the big city and left to starve in the gutter, a country fool, forever and always. She would not cry for Nikolai and Johana, killed by the girl that had been their family for nearly a decade. She would not even cry for Yaga, who had rattled the entire world and set it aflame.
She would cry for herself, and herself only.
All her life, Milena knew that she was selfish - but what wrong did being selfish bring? Being selfish meant that she was happy, because she attended to her own needs, found her own sanctuary. Kindness was a lie, taught to children to separate them from their own true joy. The world was cruel like that, forbidding joy and forcing ideas on them, ideas that meant no-one could live the life they wanted. Those people were weak, idiots and cowards, know-nothings and people pleasers.
Milena Koreva was a lot of things - but she was not weak.
Creak.
Snapping out of her daze, she raced up the stairs, both hands closed around the knives in her holster. The walls upstairs were covered in some sort of mould in the corners, a thick veil of dust covering all the minimal decorations. A single chair was in the landing, two doors on either side. Deciding that she would strike first, Lena flung open the door, heart racing. Blood pounded in her ears, electricity sawing at her spine.
Her eyes met a pair of dark brown ones, and with a heavy breath, she attacked, clawing at Yaga's face with her knives and kicking as often as she could. The witch did the same, grunting as her hands formed into claws and her eyes shut, straining. With a jolt, Lena pounced on top of her, realising what Yaga was trying to do, her beautiful face taunt with concentration. In the moonlight filtering through the grimy window, she could see the sheen of sweat breaking out on Yaga's brow.
So Lana did what she did best.
Tricks. Dancing around the room, dodging the attacks that met her, appearing one moment and disappearing another. But she didn't aim for the heart with her knives, only slashing to create ugly scars rather than real life-threatening injuries. Yaga could heal herself, she mused, landing on top of a bookshelf that felt as if it might crumble.
The witch had harnessed enough power now and was twisting her hands in a way that struck Lena as almost inhuman, though the thought was laughable, given who she was, herself. Beneath their feet, the floor began to turn and move, as if the wood were a pair of great, monstrous teeth, swallowing them both whole. Before Milena could aim a jab at Yaga's eye, they both crashed down, frozen momentarily as they adjusted to their surroundings.
They were in the room downstairs, where Dimitri's body lay.
When Yaga saw it, the scraps of colour that remained in her face completely drained, and her eyes glinted with ice in the light coming from the fireplace. Her lips pressed into a thin line, and she gave Lana a single nod.
"Did you do it?" she croaked, pursing her cracked lips.
Lana stalked over to the body, where a long trickle of blood travelled from Dimitri's open mouth and down to the floor.
"Yes."
Through half-shut eyes, Yaga gave a look that was nearly a smile. "Thank you."
Shrugging, Lena kicked the corpse. "Don't think for a moment that I did it for you. I killed him because I wanted to. Understand?"
"I would expect no such debt from you. But pray, I ask, to grant me another." Yaga's hand gently went over his ripped throat.
"And what would that be?"
"Give me the lives of the children of Salovo, and your family's will be spared. Let them not grow in a world so thick with hatred. Let me-" her voice cracked. "Let me save them."
Milena laughed. "And what will it gain me?"
"You will turn your back on this town and never hear its name again."
"I see. And why have you decided this?"
"I am done fighting with Dimitri. But as long as I am who I am, his hatred will live on. It is my duty to banish this hatred. We were just children, so I will take theirs. A life for a life, da?"
"Your reasoning is correct, Izeva. And here-" she tossed a broom from the floor. "Weapons needn't be yours, but it may be hard to clean in the forest."
"Yes, I believe I will need the Chernobog's help with that."
But she took it.
It was only then that Milena saw that Yaga's wounds had already healed. Scars took their place, one especially hideous one carved into her cheek, ripping down to her chin. Her nose looked as if it had been broken, now crooked.
God, she could heal herself quickly, at least.
But the scars wouldn't fade along with them.
Those, Yaga's expression told her, would stay forever.
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