“Polya.”
Opening her eyes, Polya smiled. “Where have you been?”
Anatoliy pushed her hair out of her face, and she shivered. “Your hands are freezing.”
“I got stuck on the roof.”
Polya yawned. A chill ran from her tail to her neck, waking her up. “What? How?”
The room was dark, and she blinked. She hated lying on her stomach like this, not being able to see what was behind her or at her feet. The window remained covered, and she tamped down the urge to growl in frustration.
If only she could push herself up!
Experimentally, she moved her hands to her sides and bent her elbows. The skin on her back pulled painfully.
“Stop,” Anatoliy chided. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
He rested his hand on her elbow, but she ignored him and pushed up. Pain radiated across her back like lightning.
“Polya! Stop!” He snaked his arm beneath her, across her chest to support her and lower her back to the bed. “You can’t do that!”
“I can’t lie here anymore, Anatoliy. I can’t see you, and I’m losing my mind.”
“I’m right here, Polya,” he said, kneeling so they were eye level. “I told you I won’t leave.”
He didn’t understand. She loved him, but she couldn’t make him understand what it did to her to have him be with her one moment and gone the next. Even her dreams were filled with him. In the best dreams he was with her—and in her nightmares. Well. She’d lived her nightmare.
If Polya had learned anything, it was that what she loved could be stolen from her in an instant.
“What if something happens to you?” she whispered, feeling a hot tear trail across her face. “I won’t know. I’ll have no way to help you.”
“I’m being careful,” he whispered, frowning. He swept his thumb across the corner of her eye. “I’m being so careful.”
“All I want is to be with you.”
“I’m with you, Polya.”
“Promise.” Her voice came out heated, and she felt a growl building in her chest. “Promise you won’t leave me.”
“I won’t leave you. I’ll always find you.”
The strength she’d had for that brief second gave out and her chest collapsed to the bed. “I won’t forget,” she snarled.
“I won’t either.”
A siren shrieked through the hospital, and Polya jumped. The skin along her back tore. She could feel the blood well out and drip, warm and wet, along her back and ribs.
Anatoliy narrowed his eyes, glancing toward the door and then the window. He stood, pressed a hand along her shoulders, and sidled to the window. She watched him, eyes straining to follow his movements when the pain kept her from shifting. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” he answered quietly. “This siren is different than the first.” He stared out the window, profile to Polya while he studied the night sky. The siren suddenly cut off. Everything was still, leaving only the sound of her breathing.
Her body began to relax; she felt her muscles releasing, one by one. It was then she heard it. A shrill whistle that sent her reeling back in time.
The mountain. The snow. The Hunt.
The avalanche.
It was a shell. She waited for what would come next. When the explosion happened, it rocked the hospital, sending plaster and dust raining down on her head.
Anatoliy moved like lightning. “This is going to hurt.”
Even though she knew what was coming, she wasn’t prepared for it. Fire rushed along her back as he lifted her in his arms. He wrapped the sheet around her. “Hold onto my neck,” he ground out. “Hold as tight as you need to.”
Her body strained to get away from his, the pressure of his arm along her back torturous. Rather than cry out, she ground her teeth together and nodded sharply. She could do this. She wouldn’t be a burden.
Outside, whistling came faster and faster until explosion followed explosion. Anatoliy wrenched open her door, but if he expected someone to stop them, they didn’t. Nurses rushed from room to room. “Get to the basement!” one of them yelled at Anatoliy before rushing to another patient. “Hurry!”
Those patients who could walk, did. Limping along the corridor, holding onto the wooden rail nailed into the wall, they hurried as fast as they could to the stairwell and lifts.
Anatoliy held open the door for a man behind him, but that was the extent of the help he gave. Polya stared at him, but he kept his eyes straight ahead, focused on where they were going.
“Basement?” she got out, but he shook his head.
“No. The hospital will be a target, and I won’t have the building collapse around us.”
She didn’t ask why. She’d seen enough in her journey from the Stovnya Mountains and across the country to believe the angry citizens of her country would target a hospital.
Patients streamed down the stairs, heading to the basement, but Anatoliy pushed opened the first floor door.
The chaos on her floor didn’t hold a candle to the first. Outside, Polya couldn’t make out anything except dust and snow. No one seemed to have any direction. The lifts were jammed. One man held his thumb on the button, so the buzzer rang incessantly.
“We’re going out,” Anatoliy said over the din.
All she could do was nod and link her fingers behind his neck. Her arms shook with the strain of holding some of her weight, and sweat dripped down her temples.
Anatoliy strode toward the doors, waiting for something, she didn’t know what, until the ground shook. Then he took off.
She didn’t know where he got his strength or speed, especially with her added weight, but nothing held him back. He dashed past motorized carriages, smoking and wrecked.
“Where?” She couldn’t get the rest of the sentence out. Even though she wasn’t the one running, she was out of breath.
How was it safer out here?
At least in the hospital there’d been the semblance of safety. There was nothing to shield them. As soon as the thought crossed her mind, shells whizzed over their head, one after the other in the same direction they’d come.
A wave of pressure shoved Anatoliy to his knees. The earth shook beneath their feet and Anatoliy held her tighter, one arm braced around her back, the other pressed against the ground. Over his shoulder, the hospital collapsed. Dust ballooned in the air like an enormous umbrella before it fell, tinkling to the ground where it mixed with glass and rubble.
All together, it was too pretty a sound for the horror it represented.
Polya coughed, choking on the dust as Anatoliy pushed himself to stand.
The shells seemed to come from all directions. The town was surrounded, by the army or by revolutionaries, Polya didn’t know. Whoever was shelling them was wrong, and whoever ordered them to destroy the hospital, evil.
Anatoliy set his back against a low building, sucking in air. His face was covered with gray dust, but his blue eyes shone. He looked like a ghost.
“Almost there,” he said, gaze flicking to hers before he glanced quickly around the corner.
From far away came the rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns, and in response, gunfire. The responding gunfire was close to the town, but it wasn’t directed toward them.
At the first rapid fire, the shelling stopped.
“Dara?” Polya asked. Had Anatoliy’s soldiers surrounded their attackers? How was that possible? Only a few soldiers had brought her here, and the shelling had come fast and furious. More than one piece of artillery had to have been pointed at the town to do this much damage.
A gust of wind blew the dust across Polya’s face. Coughing, gasping, she buried her face against Anatoliy’s neck.
“Hold on,” he told her.
The wind froze her. It cut through the thin sheet and blanket that wrapped her up. Her feet were bare, head bare, and despite the fear and pain that had her sweating, she shivered.
Guns fired nonstop. Polya couldn’t disting
uish one side returning fire from the other. But none of it hit the town.
Whoever had started shooting, they’d managed to distract the people shelling.
A gust of wind cleared the dust. Slowly, as if a giant curtain was pulled aside, the town became visible again. One side of the hospital remained standing. Polya could make out the tiled walls, the windows, the curtains. But the other three sides of the hospital were gone, collapsed in a pile of brick and glass.
It was gone.
All those people. The nurse who’d given her pain medicine, the doctors who’d stitched her closed. All of them were gone.
Why?
“Anatoliy!”
Anatoliy spun away from the hospital and the building shielding them to the face the speaker.
“Lev,” he called, jogging toward the soldier.
“Thank goodness. We saw the hospital fall, thought you were in it with the princess. Hello, Princess. The princes…” Lev said, and then held out his hands. “Do you want me to take her?”
She tightened her hands behind Anatoliy’s neck. No. Her body throbbed and her heart ached, but she wanted no one except the man holding her to touch her. No matter how gentle Lev may be, or how much his eyes resembled Anatoliy’s, she didn’t think she could bear it if Anatoliy let her go.
“I’m fine. What about the princes?” Anatoliy kissed her temple, a silent reassurance.
“The princes appeared. Somewhere along the way they met another battalion of soldiers. They attacked the men shelling the town.”
“Captured them?” Anatoliy asked.
Lev pointed toward the outskirts of town. “Come on. They have medical supplies. We’ll treat Polya there. They’ve captured some of the men. Many got away. They left the artillery and ran.”
As Anatoliy strode behind Lev, a wail rose up behind him. One ruined voice followed another, and another. Screams replaced the guns and the explosion.
It was too much for Polya. She wanted to cover her ears with her hands and shut her eyes tight. Anatoliy’s cheek pressed against her head, as if he could feel her need, and she turned her face into his chest. Hurry, she wanted to say.
Something happened to Polya as they left the center of the destroyed town. She blocked everything out except the sound of Anatoliy’s heart.
Behind her closed eyelids, she saw the faces of the victims of the Hunt. The screams from the town echoed in her brain like the screams of those victims King Aleksandr had poisoned and displayed for Polya on her way down the mountain.
Then, Polya had made herself stare into each person’s face. She’d burned them into her memory, told herself, “I see you. I will remember you.”
Today, she didn’t want to see. She didn’t want to remember. All she wanted was darkness and oblivion.
Ashamed, she focused on Anatoliy’s heartbeat. With each beat, though, she felt less like a fierce tiger girl and more like a coward.
23
This is Not a War
Polya’s slight weight worried him but not as much as her silence. Her face stayed buried against him as he followed Lev out of town and to the hastily constructed medical tents.
Soon, people from the town would find them, and the tents would become a teeming center of pain and grief.
“Here!” A medic waved a hand when Anatoliy entered.
Polya’s arms tightened around his neck for a second before he released her onto the cot. Her blue eyes were hazy with pain and something else. Ignoring the soldiers and the medic, he knelt at her side. Her cheeks flushed red, and she glanced away as if she couldn’t hold his gaze.
Taking her hand in his, he squeezed and stood, watching while the medic unwound the sheet and examined her wounds.
The stitched skin was irritated in some places, oozing in others where he’d pulled it.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Polya threaded her fingers between his. “You saved my life, Anatoliy.” Her voice was tired and sad, but she dragged his hand to her lips and kissed it.
The medic worked quickly and efficiently, not saying a word. He swabbed the wounds, rebandaged others and then shot Polya full of morphine.
“I don’t want pain medicine,” she growled too late.
“Why not?” Anatoliy asked, confused. She had to be in pain. Though she hadn’t complained about the medic’s ministrations, sweat beaded on her brow and upper lip.
Her eyes shut. “Need to be ready.” The words were slurred now.
“Ready for what?” he asked, but she was asleep.
“Anatoliy!”
He straightened from his crouch to greet Dara.
“Thank God you got out of there. I was sure I’d be digging through the rubble to find you.” His old friend clapped him on the back, and surprised him when he tugged him closer for a quick embrace.
“I’d scouted the town. Saw the factory and the train station,” he replied.
Dara scratched at his face, grimacing when he found dirt on his palm. “It was still government controlled. Those men who guarded the town were volunteers, but loyal. How’d you know to leave the hospital?”
“Instinct,” he answered. It was as simple as that. The other hamlets they’d gone through had been decimated, and he assumed the worst of the revolutionaries when they came upon this town where the government still held sway. “What’s manufactured here?”
Dara shrugged. “I don’t know yet. We stayed close to the hospital in case you needed us and didn’t venture much further.”
“Munitions.” Prince Pytor’s gaze wasn’t on Anatoliy or Dara when he entered. It was locked on Polya. “She doesn’t look any better.”
“The explosions didn’t help,” Anatoliy explained.
The prince nodded. Reaching out, he touched her forehead with the back of his hand and grimaced. “She’s feverish.”
Anatoliy touched her skin, and winced. It was hot. “Dammit.”
“We have prisoners.” Prince Pytor straightened. He held his hands behind his back, but his gaze kept falling on Polya. “Do you want to interrogate them, Kapetan?”
“Are they soldiers?” Anatoliy asked.
“Civilians,” he answered. “Revolutionaries. Cowards. Most of them ran.”
“The ones you caught did not?” Dara asked, glancing quickly at Anatoliy.
“No. They surrendered right away,” the prince answered.
Dara glanced again at Anatoliy. “Who is with them now?”
“Some of your men. Evgeny thought they would be best suited to the task, though I don’t know why. Any soldier can point a gun at a man.” He shook his head and shrugged, as if the problem wasn’t worth his consideration.
“Get them,” Anatoliy said to Dara, who clicked his heels and left. “I don’t like it.” Anatoliy explained. With one quick glance at Polya, he rushed out of the medical tent. “Dara, call them out!” he yelled.
“What is the problem?” Pytor asked.
“Did anyone search the prisoners?”
“No,” Pytor answered. “Evgeny gathered them and had your men set their weapons on them. I assure you, they’re not going anywhere.”
That wasn’t what he was afraid of. Ahead of him, an explosion blasted apart the makeshift camp. Anatoliy flew through the air, crashing into a tent before he rolled across the ground.
He shook his head. Hands against the dirt, he pushed, attempting to stand. He wavered dizzily as he tried to make sense of what he saw.
“Dara!” he yelled, and lurched forward. Beside him, Prince Pytor stumbled to his feet. Together they staggered toward the place they’d last seen Dara.
But it was only a smoking crater.
“Dara!” Anatoliy yelled again.
“I’m here!” Through the dust and dirt, Dara’s form became visible. Coughing and spluttering, he held up a hand.
As he neared Anatoliy, Dara turned, facing the prisoner’s tent. “No,” he whispered, and then louder, “No!”
Horror coursed through Anatoliy.
Gone.
His men were gone.
“We have to—” Dara cut off, and reeled toward the hole. “Help me!” he cried out, throwing aside tent poles and rocks blasted out of the ground.
He won’t find anything.
Other soldiers arrived to help, but Anatoliy stood frozen.
“Come on!” Pytor pushed him toward the crater, and he finally moved.
Though he knew it was hopeless, Anatoliy dug. He dug until he found his men, what remained of them, and could lay their bodies side by side and cover them with a wool blanket someone thrust into his hands.
One-by-one, he hid their faces. Tall Marat. Boris. Lev.
His men.
They’d survived the wrath of King Aleksandr and the horror of the Hunt.
But they hadn’t survived the revolution.
Dara collapsed next to him, and Anatoliy realized with a start that he knelt next to the men. How had he ended up on the ground?
His hands shook where they held the corner of a wool blanket, and he forced his fingers to release. Curling them into fists, he pressed them into his legs hard enough to hurt.
“Gone,” Dara choked. “They’re gone.”
Anatoliy couldn’t fathom. Until Polya, these men were all he had. Closer than brothers, he loved them more than his own mother.
Inside his chest, his heart bled. He glanced at Dara who stared white faced at the still forms of their friends. His scar stood out, pale against the even paler shade of his skin. He shook his head from side to side, as disbelieving as Anatoliy.
“They—” Dara cleared his throat and started again. “The prisoners wore explosives. I found—” Again he had to stop. “I found a belt. That was why they surrendered. All along they planned to detonate those explosives and take out as many soldiers as they could. It would have been our soldiers, or someone else’s. They were just waiting.” Wide-eyed, he stared at Anatoliy. “What kind of war is this?”
“It is not a war,” Anatoliy answered. “It’s a revolution.”
Everything changed.
Not even turning back from beast to man left Anatoliy as confused as the death of his soldiers.
Revolution and Rising Page 13