Pav stilled. His fingers flexed gently against her scalp.
Harper closed her eyes and rested her face against his shoulder.
Finally, the voices faded. A last exchange with Katya, her tone bored and dismissive. The front door. Engines starting. The vehicles pulling away, the sound diminishing down the road until the only thing left was the creak of the building settling back into its quiet.
Silence.
They didn’t move.
His hand in her hair. Her face against his shoulder. Their bodies pressed together in the dark. The search was over, and neither of them shifted apart.
Five seconds. Ten.
The grate opened. Light poured in—blinding after the darkness.
Katya’s face appeared. Unimpressed.
“They’re gone. You can stop hiding now.”
Harper pulled back from Pav’s shoulder. His hand left her hair. The cold rushed into the space between them. She stayed where she was for a fraction too long—like if she didn’t move,it might come back. Then she crawled out after Pav, into the freezing air and the world waiting for them.
Katya was already walking back inside. “I need to check on my bread.”
There was dust in Harper’s hair, her skin. The lines of light still ghosting in her vision.
Pav held out his hand.
She looked at it, met his eyes for a second, then slid her hand into his.
32
The water turnedgray the moment Pav lowered himself in. Days of blood and sweat and forest lifted from his skin in slow, clouded ribbons.
It didn’t feel like getting clean.
It felt like something being stripped away.
Katya’s bathroom was small. Pale green tiles, grout darkened with age. A frosted window let in a square of hazy light. Steam thickened the air, softening the edges of everything.
He didn’t trust comfortable. That was when you stopped scanning. But the heat worked anyway.
It sank into his shoulders, his ribs, the joint Harper had forced back into place. Muscle by muscle, his body uncoiled—not willingly, but because it didn’t have the strength to resist.
He let it happen.
His watch broke the surface. Dull steel worn smooth at the edges, scratched crystal, the red second hand ticking steady.
Alexei’s.
He’d washed around it without thinking. The watch stayed on. It always did. Same as the guilt. Always there. He let his hand slip back under the water.
The water cooled by degrees, but his mind didn’t.
The men looking for them had left, but they’d be back, a wider sweep, more vehicles. The window of safety was hours, not days. The border was twenty miles south. The window was closing, but it wasn’t gone yet.
His shoulder was functional. His chest wound was improving, the itch and heat retreating, the infection contained. And his ribs were just noise.
Sixty percent, maybe seventy. Enough to move and get Harper to the border if nothing else went wrong.
