Twenty-five. I latch on to that sliver of knowledge. I’m twenty-five, not a newborn. Encouraged, I sift through more of the tangled threads, seeking an answer as to what’s happening, but it eludes me, the recollections coming slowly, if at all.
Darkness. Fire. A nightmare demon coming to claim me.
Is that a memory or something I saw in a movie?
A needle biting deep into my neck. Unwelcome lassitude spreading through my body.
That part feels real. My mind might not be functioning, but my body knows the truth. It senses the threat. My heart rate intensifies as adrenaline saturates my veins. Yes. Yes, that’s it. I can do it. With strength born of growing terror, I force open my leaden lids and look up into a pair of eyes darker than the night surrounding us. Eyes set in a cruelly handsome face that haunts my dreams… and my nightmares.
“Don’t fight it, Alinyonok,” Alexei Leonov murmurs. His dark voice holds both a promise and a threat as he gently threads his fingers through my hair, massaging away the throbbing tension in my skull. “You’ll only make it harder on yourself.”
The edges of his calluses catch on the tangles in my long hair, and he pulls his fingers out, only to curve his palm around my jaw. He has big hands, dangerous hands. Hands that have killed dozens today alone. The recollection roils my stomach even as some knot of tension deep inside me unravels. For ten long years, I’ve dreaded this moment, and finally, it’s here.
He’s here.
He’s come for me.
“Don’t cry,” my husband-to-be says softly, brushing away the wetness on my face with the rough edge of his thumb. “It won’t help. You know that.”
Yes, I do. Nothing and no one can help me now. I recognize that distant roar. It’s the sound of a plane engine. We’re in the air.
I close my eyes and let the hazy darkness take me.