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I press my lips to keep my words from escaping. A lot of what I’ve seen makes me uncomfortable. Are these people truly just out here doing forbidden things without any consequences? What a chaotic world.
“Come on.” Ben keeps the red door open for me.
When I go inside, my breath hitches. I’ve never seen such colorful walls. The air is sweet, smelling of fruits and something unfamiliar. I go through a short corridor and enter an even more amazing space.
It looks like our cafeteria, but instead of metal benches, there are soft furnishings and curiously designed chairs. There is a wall full of bottles and teapots. In front of it is a tall table. A burly woman stands behind it, wiping a glass.
She raises a brow when she sees me, then her eyes flick to Ben.
“We’re not open,” she says in a deep, unladylike voice. Koschei would have beaten that timbre out of her throat.
“I know,” Ben says behind me. “I need to see Tanya. Tell her that her former trainee is here to see her.”
The woman grunts something I don’t hear, picks up a remote, and puts it to her ear.
I stare at her, open-mouthed. I thought that was only used to operate the TV. There’s a lot I still have to learn.
“A guy and a girl are here to see you. The guy says you trained him or something.” The woman puts the remote down without letting us out of her sight.
I touch the shiny table closest to where I’m standing, expecting it to be some other entertainment equipment. It isn’t. It’s only polished to perfection, like a black pearl. In the middle of the table, there’s a bouquet of fragrant purple flowers. I lower my head to it and draw in a big breath. It tickles my nose and I start coughing, a little bit intoxicated by its scent. Parts of it crumble from the touch of the air.
“What is this?” I ask Ben after my coughing fit is over.
“Lavender,” he replies distractedly. His gaze is fixed on the dark corridor at the other end of the big room. He’s waiting for the woman like she’s his promised wife. Like in the fairy tales.
When she enters, I can see why. Her beauty makes his breath hitch. As she gets closer, my own breathing speeds up.
Pale skin, blue eyes, and blond hair. Sharp, cold, familiar features. She’s not thin like me, her body filling the tight clothes she’s wearing like in one of Koschei’s secret pictures.
“What are you doing here?” Her voice is sharp, similar to how it was at the village of steel houses. It appears she doesn’t like Ben very much.
“I’m sorry for dropping by unannounced, but there’s someone you should meet,” Ben says and moves to reveal me.
Her gaze drops to my face and her eyes widen.
In that open-eyed stare, between the lines of her face, and beyond her short, strange haircut, I realize why she seems so familiar.
She’s in my fuzzy childhood memories. I know her.
Chapter 13
These bright blue eyes. The pale blond hair so light, it would blend with the color of the blinding snow. The features of a child that should be long dead.
She should have died in the fire years ago. With her mother, my mother, all the women my grandfather used to torment. With the other children. None of us should have survived, yet now there are two of us walking around. That raises the question, ishedead?
I forget to blink. I tense my jaw, keeping my mouth shut, unwilling to let my surprise show. This child, this young woman, is taller than me and so skinny. Ben’s clothes hang off her like there’s only skin and bones under them.
And as the shock of the encounter wears off, it’s replaced by familiar anger. I don’t know if she remembers me, and how much, but she can potentially destroy the whole life I’ve built here. She could bringtrouble to my doorstep. Drag me back to a life I barely escaped.
“Her name is Jenya.” Ben’s voice interrupts my reeling thoughts.
I know. I know all about her name and her filthy lineage. As dirty and disgusting as mine. We’re both mongrels that shouldn’t have lived.
“Get her out of here,” I hiss at him.
He flinches like I’ve burned him. Evgenya, Jenya, doesn’t. She just stares at me.
“??????????,” she says in Russian.
