My heated emotions took a sudden halt. Looking at the two remaining Auraseers—the only two, besides me, who’d managed to survive—my heart split apart like the last leaf from an ice-frosted tree. What if I did run away? Anton would be forced to take Tola to Torchev. How could I allow a child to be sent in my place to protect Emperor Valko when a seasoned Auraseer had been executed for failing to do just that? It would be a death sentence. And after Tola, Dasha would be required.
Building within myself a shaky fortress of resolve, I crossed to the doorway, knelt by the girls, and took their hands in mine. If I made a show of convincing confidence, they would glean it from my aura. “You must be brave,” I said. “Sestra Mirna will depend upon you.” My words felt insensitive as they spilled from my mouth. Dasha and Tola were more fragile, more vulnerable, than they had ever been. But I needed them to find the courage to live here in such an abandoned state. “I will go to the emperor myself and see to it you are comfortable here.”
Tola nodded, accepting her fate, though her tears never ceased to flow. I swallowed my heart, clawing up my throat, and looked to Dasha. “And when I come to visit”—something the emperor would surely never allow—“your hair will be so long, it will sweep the convent halls.”
Dasha grinned a little at that, and I did my best to mirror her flickering hope. Then, biting my lip, I rose to my feet and revolved to face the prince. His piercing gaze was inscrutable, his emotions locked behind some new barrier he’d thrown up against me.
“I will go with you to Torchev,” I said. “Tonight. So long as you promise to have these walls rebuilt and send a guard immediately upon our return to protect the convent.” At least some provisions remained here. The cold storage cellars were surely standing, and the library’s fireplace could be used for cooking now the kitchen was gone.
Anton’s eyes lowered to Dasha and Tola, flanking my sides. His boot tapped three times before he said, “You have my word.”
I inhaled a steadying breath. Every fiber holding me together threatened to give way until I crumbled back to the dust and earth I came from. “Then you should prepare your horses.”
I was not ready. Nothing could have prepared me for this moment.
“I am ready,” I said.
CHAPTER FIVE
SESTRA MIRNA STOOD IN THE SNOW BEFORE THE BLACKENED rubble of the convent. Dasha and Tola clung to her skirt. The three of them watched me on the edge of the road, preparing to say one last good-bye as I waited for the troika to pull out from the stables.
Breathe, Sonya. Just breathe.
I pictured Yuliya in the infirmary when I had tried my best to give her a deserving farewell. Sestra Mirna hadn’t yet had the chance to clean her body, so I stripped away my friend’s crimson-soaked sheets and removed the bandage from the crook of her arm. My hands trembled when I sponged away the dried blood from the gash in her leg and worked the tangles out of her matted ginger hair.
“I’m so sorry,” I told her again and again.
Tending to her was a torment. Every time I touched her blood, the echoes of her last agonizing moments of life rushed into my awareness.
Terror. Helplessness. Sheer anxiety. Pity. Sorrow. Despondency. Her suffering stole my breath, made my body seize with pain, my teeth grind together so I wouldn’t cry out.
Then a strange euphoria flooded into me. A blissful abandon, even though her physical suffering intensified. And past it came the most amazing feeling of all—calm courage. She was brave in the face of dying.
Setting my rag aside, I swallowed, closed my eyes, and took her cold hand in mine. This time I let myself cry. I fell to my knees and bent my head over Yuliya’s stiff hand.
“Stop that at once!” Sestra Mirna ripped my hand from Yuliya’s.
My eyes flew open, and I gasped out a sob from the separation of auras. My wet lashes blurred my vision, but I didn’t need to see to feel the sestra’s fury.
“Leave her be!” she said.
I absorbed her disdain until it transformed into my own shame. Still, I tried to defend myself. “I’m not harming her.”
“Unnatural child!” She flung the accusation in a harsh whisper. Beneath it, I felt her visceral fear of me. “No one should be able to sense the auras of the dead. Your gift is unbridled. You are abnormal.”
“Forgive me,” was all I could say against the sting of her dagger-sharp words. “Please forgive me.”
The sestra’s shoulders fell. Her fear turned to remorse. It paved its way across her weathered face and into the marrow of my bones. “What more could I have done for you?” She sighed, touching my wet cheek. “How was it possible to teach you anything?”
I shook my head. I had no answer for her. And her brief tenderness did nothing to comfort me. It only racked me with more humiliation. “This wasn’t your fault, Sestra Mirna.”
She dropped her hand. What “this” meant, we both knew—the deaths of twenty-three Auraseers, those whom the sestras deemed holy, blessed by the goddess Feya, even if the empire saw us as nothing more than a race of slaves.