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“You’re about to.”

“Yes.”

She looks away, but she doesn’t move out of my arms. I let her remain there. Eventually, I fall asleep again.

I wake late. The first thing I notice is the light.

It’s too bright at the edges of the curtains, the kind of morning light that means the house has been awake for a while without me. That almost never happens. I’m usually up before anyone has a reason to look for me, already showered, dressed, prepared for whatever needs handling before breakfast.

But Elara’s still asleep against me, and for a few seconds I let myself stay there.

Her hair’s across my mouth. I breathe her in before moving it aside, and the smell of her shampoo, warm from sleep, settles something in me I didn’t know was unsettled. She is tucked back against my chest with complete trust, one hand under her cheek, the sheet low on her shoulder. I look at her and feel the kind of peace I don’t trust because I have never known what to do with it when it arrives.

Then the scream tears through the house.

Elara jerks awake as I sit up.

For half a second, neither of us understands the sound. It’s too raw to belong to the ordinary morning. My heart jerks violently. Something’s wrong.

I’m out of bed before Elara can speak.

“What was that?” she asks, already reaching for the sheet.

“Stay here.”

I pull on my trousers from the chair, not bothering with the shirt or the belt. Elara says my name behind me, but I am already at the door, opening it hard enough that it hits the wall.

The corridor outside is bright and empty for one strange second, and then doors begin opening. Someone calls from downstairs. I hear hurried footsteps, a chair scraping somewhere, Galina’s voice breaking around words I cannot make out.

I run.

The sound leads me toward the main staircase, and with every step the house feels wrong in a way I cannot explain until I reach the landing and see Galina below.

She’s standing near the bottom of the stairs with one hand pressed to her mouth, the other gripping the banister so hard her knuckles are white. She looks up at me, and whatever is on her face makes my stomach drop before I look where she is looking.

Anya is lying at the bottom of the stairs.

For a moment, my mind refuses to understand what I’m seeing.

Then I’m moving again.

I take the stairs two and three at a time, one hand on the rail, and drop to my knees beside her. She’s on her side, too still, one arm bent beneath her body, hair partly covering her face. There’s blood at her forehead, running into her eyebrow and down toward the floor in a thin line that looks too bright against her skin.

“Don’t move her,” I say, though Galina is not touching her. Kirill is also leaning down next to them, and so are a few other staff.

“I found her like this,” Galina says, and I’ve never heard her sound like that. “I came down to wake her, and she wasn’t in her bed, and then I saw⁠—”

I press two fingers to Anya’s neck.

There is a pulse. Weak, but steady enough that I can breathe. Only then do I let air back into my chest.

“She’s breathing,” I say.

That’s all I need.

I slide one arm beneath her shoulders and the other beneath her knees, careful with her head as I lift her. Her body is limp against me, too still, too light, blood warm against my bare chest from the cut near her forehead.

Galina makes a small sound behind me.