Romanov(56)

Ahead of us.

I ducked behind a tree but Alexei advanced. “Remember, we can’t be heard. No one sees us.”

We picked our way through the forest until, through the labyrinth of trees, I spotted a form. Though Alexei was right—we were unseen and unheard to the regular world—I still pressed against trees and peered around trunks.

Then I saw him.

Zash.

My executioner. He was on his knees at the base of a large tree, his head in his hands and his pistol in his lap. “Iisus,” he said, hardly louder than a whisper. “Forgive me.”

Iisus? Forgiveness? How dare Zash ask for forgiveness? He shot me! Nothing could undo what he’d done. His fingers clawed at his hair, as though trying to pull out the memories. As though the pain would drown out their screams.

Alexei gasped. “It’s Zash!” He sounded excited. Hopeful.

“He shot me,” I snapped. “We can’t trust him.”

Alexei went silent. I felt wrong watching Zash’s sorrow as though it were a play. I didn’t believe half of it. That was until he quieted and seemed to enter a new place of resignation. Of cold hopelessness as he reached into his lap and picked up his pistol. He looked at it as though he’d never seen one before.

Then he rotated the barrel until it pointed to his heart. Changed his mind and slid the tip up under his jaw.

“No!” Alexei shouted.

Even I was stunned. The old Nastya didn’t wish Zash to be gone from this world. But the new Nastya didn’t want Zash to exist anymore after what he’d done. It made me angry to see him taking such an escape. He didn’t deserve to be free of whatever pain he was feeling. His suffering was penance for his decision to execute my family.

“Stop!” Alexei hollered near Zash’s ear. Zash tensed. For a moment I thought he heard Alexei. But then he slid his finger over the trigger. “Nastya!” Alexei turned to me as though I could do something. The more panicked he grew, the harder my heart thumped.

This wasn’t right. This wasn’t fair.

“I don’t know how to stop him, Alexei.” My voice sounded dead.

Alexei tried to shove the gun out of Zash’s hand, but his own thin limb went straight through it. Zash’s hand trembled, but the gun barrel stayed fixed against his skin. He started muttering to himself in Russian. Swift and desperate. I caught Iisus again.

“What is the next spell from the doll?” Alexei screamed at me. “Use one of those!”

I snapped out of my numbness. Of course. Of course I had to stop Zash—for Alexei’s sake. For mine. I couldn’t watch him die. We had lived through a sea of blood. And though Zash shot us, Alexei still cared for him. I was tired of seeing Alexei in pain.

I grappled for the doll against my sternum, but I couldn’t pull it out. It was trapped in the in-between land of physical and ethereal. In the ethereal world I had it. In the physical world Yurovsky had it. “The doll is stuck. I can’t use it because Yurovsky has it!”

“Well, what was the first spell? Maybe it will turn Zash into a ghost like us.” He placed his fingers around Zash’s wrist, angling it as though he were touching him. Then he held out his free hand for me. I grabbed it and searched for the spell word, but already I knew it wouldn’t work. The spell had been used. It was gone from my lips. I felt the emptiness.

I said it anyway. “Ajnin.”

The change came like a rushing wind. My body grew heavy. Pain blossomed in my chest. My knees gave out and I dropped, catching myself on a log. The scene darkened and I blinked rapidly, trying to take it in as my eyes blurred and readjusted.

I was physical again.

Alexei kept his feet a moment longer, but he stiffened as though an electric shock had gone through him. His eyes slid to mine and a feeble plea escaped his lips. “Nas . . . tya . . .”

He fell headlong across Zash, his hand tearing the gun away from Zash’s head. It went off, sending a bullet into the leaves above us. Zash cried out and fumbled for his dropped pistol. He scrambled out from beneath Alexei’s body and then held the pistol like a shield between him and us.

“No!” I lurched to my feet. The underbrush grabbed at my skirt as I fought to reach my brother, finally flinging myself in front of him. Sharp pain stabbed me at all angles. I glared up at Zash and his trembling pistol. “He just saved your life, Zash. Don’t you dare murder him.”

Zash stood pale as the body of my dead papa. The gun tumbled from his hand and he crossed himself. “How . . . ? What are you?”

“Not four hours ago, you shot me in the chest. And now you don’t recognize me?” I wasn’t interested in explaining how I was alive or why the bullet ricocheted. And now that he no longer pointed a firearm at me, I twisted to my brother.

He lay with his eyes squeezed shut. Trembling. “Alexei?” I called softly.

“Ah,” he groaned, reaching out with his hand. “I . . . h-h-hurt.”

And I could see why. Beneath the now-risen sun I could finally take in his injuries—they’d not shown on his ethereal body. A bullet had gone clean through the palm of his left hand and half his face had swollen purple from the butt of a gun clubbing him down. Someone had speared his hip with a bayonet when Yurovsky commanded everyone to finish the job without bullets.

Of all people to survive an execution, I never would have guessed Alexei to be one of them. But at the rate he was bleeding and his head was swelling, he would not hold that title long. “Oh no.” I grabbed his hand. “No, no, no. What have I done? Alexei, what did I do?”