My father collapses, spurting blood from a dozen gashes.
I sink to my knees, sobbing, grabbing for his hand.
I lift that hand, heavy as a bear paw, and try to hold it against my face, to feel his rough palm one last time.
My father looks into my eyes.
His teeth clench and he makes a furious, gargling sound, his fingers scrabbling, clutching at my throat. Then those cloudy green eyes roll upward, and his hand falls away from my neck, dropping to the ground.
I look up at Rafe, who killed my father. Who saved my life.
He looks back at me, tall and dark and the calmest I’ve ever seen him.
Silently, he holds out his hand to lift me up.
I don’t know who fires first, or if it’s even intentional. It might have been Stepan Pavluk, who after all is only a bookkeeper, and should never have been brought to this place.
I only hear the pop of a finger convulsing against a trigger, and then I see Leo touch his side, a startled look on his face, blood blooming on his shirt.
Then everyone is firing, and Rafe throws me facedown on the grate, covering me with his body.
The chamber echoes with shots from all directions, heat and noise and bits of hot stone raining down on me, like I’m strapped to a pallet of fireworks all exploding at once.
And then we’re running again, and this time it’s not because we’re being chased—everyone is dead behind us. We’re running to the boat because Leo and Hedeon and Kade are all bleeding badly, and the mine itself is groaning, tunnels still collapsing from the C4 charges detonated by Sloane. The whole thing is about to fall down on our heads.
We run to the dock, piling into the speedboat as Adrik casts off. This time we count to be sure no one is left behind: Sabrina, Adrik, Kade, Ivan, Sloane, Freya, the four Petrov soldiers, Leo, Anna, Dean, Rafe, and me.
Then we’re speeding down the dark river, the stone tunnel so close that we have to crouch low in the boat, still hearing the crashes and echoes of falling rock behind us.
We pass through a dark cavern, the ceiling suddenly soaring overhead, the water glittering black, the motor loud in the empty space.
Anna’s scream echoes off the walls as there’s a splash right behind us, and she shouts out, “LEO!”
Leo has fallen in, sinking below water darker than ink.
The boat is already far past where he fell. Adrik cuts the motor, trying to circle around. Dean dives off the boat, stroking hard for the place where Leo disappeared.
Sloane takes the headlamp off the front of the boat, aiming it across the water.
I see Dean’s pale blond head dive under again and again as he searches for Leo. I’m about to jump off the boat myself when he pops up once more, this time dragging something heavy.
Anna leaps into the water too. Together, they haul Leo back in.
He’s gray with cold and shock.
Adrik starts the motor again, roaring off down the dark river.
We speed faster and faster, recklessly close to the stone walls.
Then, like a cork out of a champagne bottle, we pop out into dazzling sunshine and cold, fresh air.
34
Rafe
We take Leo, Hedeon, and Kade to the hospital in Almaty.
I have a pretty nasty puncture in my shoulder that requires a dozen stitches, and Timo needs a bullet dug out of his calf, though he doesn’t mention it until we’re at the hospital, as it wasn’t bothering him too much and he didn’t want to make a fuss about it.
The Kazakh doctors are wise enough to take my mother’s wad of bills and use the language barrier as an excuse not to ask any questions.
My mother insists that they fully examine my dad, to make sure he’s not in any worse condition than might be expected after his prolonged imprisonment.
It’s strange to see how much he’s changed. Even after he’s showered and shaved off the beard, and cut his hair above the shoulders, there’s a new hardness to his face, a leanness to his frame carving out each muscle to its most extreme shape.
He can’t take his eyes off my mother. They refuse to part from each other, even for a moment. I’ve never seen her cling to him like this, never letting go of his arm or his hand, never taking a step from his side.
I feel the same about Nix. I don’t let her out of my sight, afraid that she might be far more fragile that she looks, ready to shatter any second like hot glass under cold water.
I think she’s in shock.
She sits silent and pale, all brightness wiped from her face.
Everyone else has cleaned up and changed clothes. She still sits in the outfit she chose so hopefully for our date, her clothing filthy with dust and stained with her father’s blood.
When my parents return—my father clean-shaven and my mother wearing her favorite leather jacket and boots once more—Nix looks up at them both.
“How much money did he take from you?” she asks. “I’ll pay you back every cent.”
My father looks at her, his eyes dark as flint.
“Money can’t repay what was taken,” he says.
Nix trembles under his stare, but she holds his gaze.
“What can I offer, then?” she says.
“You can offer yourself,” my father says. “Your mind, your body, your soul, your loyalty, your life . . . to my son.”
Nix turns to look at me, and for some reason, it’s harder for her to meet my eyes. She bites her lower lip, her head bowed, hair hanging down over her face.
I cross the space between her and tilt up her chin so she has to look at me.
“I want you,” I say to her. “I want your wildness. I want your passion. I want you to love me the way you love the wind and the water and the outdoors. I want you to be untamable, except by me. I want you to be my wife.”
She takes a deep breath, holding my gaze at last.
“Yes,” she says. “I will.”
“You’ll come to America with me. We’ll rebuild everything your father tried to destroy.”
Nix’s lower lip trembles. I’m sure she’s thinking of her home outside of Kyiv, the acres of land, the sprawling compound that will sit empty, abandoned, without her or her father or any of his men.
“Will you miss Kyiv?” I ask her.
She shakes her head, slowly.
“It will always be empty, whether I return to it or not. Home is the people you love, not a building, not a place. I want to go home with you, Rafe.”
I love the sound of my name on her lips—my real name.
I grab her by the shoulders and I kiss her, the hardest I’ve ever kissed her.
She belongs to me now, fully and completely.
No lies between us.
Only the brutal truth.
Our fathers were friends, and then enemies. Now the house of Moroz is destroyed, and the Petrovs live on. Nix is one of us.
“Until Rafe buys you a better ring,” my father says.
He pulls the gold ring off the pinky of his right hand, slipping it onto the third finger of Nix’s left.
She turns her hand so the inscription catches the light:
Fides Est In Sanguinem
Loyalty In Blood
We had intended to take Dean, Hedeon, Kade, Anna, and Leo back to Kingmakers as quickly as possible, hoping to sneak them back onto the island to avoid the uproar of leaving without permission.