We’re sitting side by side on the bench seat with seatbelts on because the dirt path cutting through the woods is ice-covered—we’ve hit a few slick spots along the way, one that spun the car nearly all the way around. Anya’s in the middle seat beside me, leaning sideways against me for support as she struggles through her pain.
It was easy getting through the gate at Mikhailov Manor.
Too easy.
There’s a cadence of worry that’s been continually running through my mind since we passed through and drove away from the manor grounds.
Too easy.
Though there’s still the light of hope inside me, I can feel it slowly fade. It scares me because I can’t make sense of this feeling, this unease. It’s a heavy sense of foreboding weighing on my shoulders and I just can’t seem to shake it.
Kostya follows a curve that opens into a straightaway. The car goes up an incline. Kostya reduces his speed as we crest over the peak of the hill, then lets the car roll down the long, gradual decline. I feel gravity tugging me forward in my seat and my grip around Anya’s shoulders tightens.
I glance over at her to see her face contorted in absolute agony, her chin dropping toward her chest as she grits her teeth through another shattering contraction. A hiss and a moan escape her and morph into a piercing scream through the last seconds of her recurrent torture.
She gasps for a breath and I can see the sweat on her brow. “Hurry…please,” she begs.
She begs, but there’s nothing I can do. There’s not a goddamn thing I can do for my blue-eyed girl.
The back tires screech as they catch and skid over ice, tugging the car toward the right. I tense, holding Anya tighter, probably only hurting her more, but I’m terrified to let go of her. I don’t want her flung across the car. Kostya’s able to correct and ease the car straight again and we continue down the never-ending decline.
Our path is lined with trees—rows and rows of them creating the dense forest surrounding us. The tree line begins only yards away from the car on either side. I look out of the window on my left and it’s like looking out to see dark soldiers in the night, threatening to bring war upon us if we venture from our designated path.
The thick trunks are black in the night and they threaten to catch us, stop us dead in our tracks every time the car skids—and every time I’m certain we’ll skid off the road and take a beating by one of the monstrous soldier trees. I turn to look at Anya on my right and I see that she’s also looking out at them, at the rapidly falling snow that’s intent on smothering us from above.
I catch her gaze and even in the dark, her blue eyes are bewitching.
Tell her you love her.
Tell her now.
Tell her fast.
The voice inside me is insistent and urgent, and the instinctual tug of it makes my heart drop into my stomach. I open my mouth to speak, but then Kostya shouts something in Russian, something urgent.
Anya’s head snaps forward and her forehead wrinkles in confusion. “Spike strip?”
My chest feels hollow, my heart burning in acid where its sunk deep in my gut. This is it. That feeling that it’s too easy, that everything is wrong. It’s all going to hell and it’s happening right fucking now.
It’s unavoidable.
We feel the bump when the front tires roll over something in the road.
Spike strip?
There’s a loud blast, quickly followed by another—the car teeters down in the front, then in the back, rocking us as the tires blow. We fishtail.
A fucking spike strip.
“Fuck!” I pull Anya hard into my side with one arm, my other grasping the handle at the ceiling.
We hit a patch of ice after the tire blowout and we spin. My body falls against Anya’s, but I try to pull myself away with the handle, tugging her with me as the inertia threatens to throw her to the other side of the car. Her middle seat belt doesn’t have a chest strap—only fitting across her lap under her belly—and I have instant regret for telling her to sit there where I could comfort her.
“Ezra!” she screams.
The blown-out tires snag on the edge of the road and the whole goddamn world shifts. Everything happens slowly and quickly all at once, and fuck, I think this might be the end of everything.
The car tilts.
It lifts.
It rolls.
It lands upside down and slides toward the dark warrior trees. One of their massive trunks is heading right for us—I can see it through the window on the opposite side of the car…like it’s coming after Anya.
It slams into us, metal crumbling and crushing and closing in around us.
A sudden stop.
My head slams sideways against the doorframe.
And everything goes black.
I hear my name, but it’s faraway.
A frantic voice is calling to me, but I’m struggling to wake from this darkness. I blink, hoping my eyes will open. It takes a few times, but when they finally do, I’m torn from this strange, dark slumber of nothingness. The voice is still calling to me, but my ears are ringing and it’s not clear. I shake my head and though the ringing starts to fade, the movement makes me feel like I’m fucking falling.
I’m still in the car.
There was an accident.
Shit. Anya.
“Ezra! Ezra, please!” she says as I turn my head to look at her.
The world looks strange. Her hair stands up straight above her head and it takes me a minute to work out why. It’s hard to make sense of things with the way my head throbs.
“We’re…are we upside down?” I ask.
“Ezra,” she cries. “Help me. I…I think the baby’s coming…I feel like I need to push. Help me get out!”
She sounds frantic, unhinged, and desperate.
That wakes me right the fuck up.
My vision is fuzzy, but I act without thinking, ignoring how off-centered I feel. I fumble to find the latch of my belt buckle, but when my fingers find the button, I push and unhook myself without thought. I fall from my seat to the roof of the car and flinch from my landing. Thank God it didn’t crush us when it rolled—a fucking miracle. Still, the space I have to work with is tight.
I maneuver myself around and realize right away that there’s only one way out of the backseat. Anya’s side of the car is curved around the trunk of a tree. The massive base is only a foot or so away from her and the sight of it spikes my adrenaline.
I’ve gotta get her out.
We have to go out the opposite side, through the door I sat beside. The window is blown out, and I know I can squeeze her out through it if I have to, though I’m hoping to God that the door will open. But first, I have to get her down.