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The irony doesn’t seem clear to Mara, given how easily she was selling me off to Mikhail, and pointing it out feels useless. She’s in her own world with her own mindset, and nothing I can say will matter.
I ache all over. I ache for the powerlessness to protect my baby. I ache for Kristof. Even trying to imagine what he’d say right now doesn’t help. He’d tell me to survive, but that in itself is on a timer. As soon as my little baby is born, my usefulness to Mara ends.
Mara insists he’s dead, but I pray in my heart for that to be a lie. I don’t know how, given the death of my father, but I pray. I have nothing else.
“Now then, drink up.” Mara stirs in the last of the crushed pulls and slides a straw into the glass.
“Didn’t the doctor say no more drugs?” I remark cautiously. The glass sparkles from the tears clinging to my lower lashes.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not drugging you. It’s vitamins for you and the baby.”
My eyes narrow, and I slowly look up at her. “I hope when Kristof gets here, he lets me watch as he kills you.”
Mara’s hands falter slightly, then she shakes her head. “Oh, yes. Your knight in dented armor. If he really did crawl out of his grave to save you, I think I would be the least of your worries. The rising of the undead,” she mocks, laughing to herself. “Is that the little story you’re weaving to yourself, hmm?”
“I hate you.”
“Now, drink.” I have no choice, and the orange juice is just sweet enough that I end up drinking greedily like my throat has a mind of its own. I drain the glass. It’s a strain, but worth it.
Then I sink back down with a gasp and Mara stands. As she pulls the blankets over my bare legs and belly, weight forms across my eyelids as I blink.
Each blink adds more and more weight, and sleepiness washes over me as Mara taps my cheek.
“You lied,” I slur softly.
Mara’s chuckle floats above me. “Are you surprised? Don’t worry, it’s all-natural. Just to keep you calm.”
Calm.
Like the flick of a switch, the days start to blur once more, but this time, the sedatives Mara gives me don’t last as long, and my mind is cleared each time I come to.
I come to crave the darkness, though, as each time I wake, I’m faced with Mara’s joy over baby clothes, over decorating the nursery, and words with well wishes from other Families congratulating her on her pregnancy.
Each time I act out, Mara holds one thing over me.
If I’m good, she’ll let me carry the baby to term. If I’m bad, she’ll cut it out of me and leave me to die on the table.
Her cruelty knows no bounds, and my only safety is at night when the power in my tea drags me into unsettled dreams of Kristof. He’s always there, and yet never clear enough for me to cling to.
The days trickle by, and my hopelessness grows until one thought becomes a constant. It follows me day to day like a shadow and offers me the only solution I have access to.
To save myself and my baby, my only hope is death.
30
KRISTOF
Time has no meaning.
The cell that’s been my home for these past weeks—months?—is like something right out of the old fantasy novels Alena would bury herself in. Three walls of my prison are made of black stones fixed amid crumbling cement. The fourth is made of iron bars and a gate so old that it screams every time it opens. That sound has scared me out of sleep more times than I care to count.
Coldness clings to everything. I’ve been naked since I woke up here, and with water constantly dripping down the walls and turning to ice on the floors, the cold keeps my muscles stiff enough that I’m continuously at a disadvantage against my captors.
The Kuznetsovs.
They never hide who they are, and after one spent six hours slowly peeling the skin from my left shoulder, I never doubted who they are. For hours, they held me down, scorching my flesh with hot pokers and then peeling my skin as one would delicately remove the film from a one-of-a-kind collectible. I’d kept my screams of pain to a minimum.
I think.
