Chapter 4Once Upon a Time, an Angel and a Devil Fell in Love
Once Upon a Time, an Angel and a Devil Fell in Love
Isabella
The snow is endless.
It stretches in all directions, a blank, frozen wasteland beneath a sky that isn’t quite black but not light either, just an eternal, suffocating gray. There is no wind, no sound, just the quiet crunch of my footsteps as I move forward.
I don’t know where I’m going, but my body does. My bare feet should hurt, should be frozen, but I feel nothing. The cold bites at my skin, yet I don’t shiver.
Something about this place is wrong.
I stop. In the distance, a pocket watch swings from a tree branch, ticking in an erratic rhythm that doesn’t match time as I know it. Tick. Tick. Tick. The sound is too loud, filling the silent world around me.
I step closer, drawn to it like it holds answers I don’t even know I’m searching for. My fingers brush the cold metal—
A gunshot rips through the silence.
The sound slams into me like a physical force, my breath stalling as a sharp wind kicks up out of nowhere. The snow is no longer untouched. It’s red. Blood blooms beneath my feet, seeping through the ice.
I whirl around, my pulse thundering.
There, in the distance, a man kneels in the snow, his head bowed, his hands bound behind his back. His dark hair is matted with blood, and a shadowy figure stands behind him, a gun pressed to his skull.
The snow beneath my feet shifts.
At first, I think it’s just the wind, but then I sink—my stomach lurches as the ground gives way beneath me. The frozen surface fractures like glass, splintering into jagged veins of black ice that stretch in every direction. A warning. A trap.
I try to move, but my legs won’t obey.
‘‘Help me!’’ I scream, but my voice is swallowed by the howling wind.
I lurch forward, desperate to reach him, but with every step, the ice thins beneath me. The cracks widen. My breath comes fast and sharp, fogging in the frozen air. I’m running out of time.
A second gunshot.
The ice shatters.
I plunge into the freezing abyss, the water swallowing me whole.
It’s not just cold, it’s a death grip. The kind of cold that rips the breath from your lungs, that turns your bones to lead. My scream dies in a rush of bubbles, lost to the dark depths.
I thrash, but the more I fight, the deeper I sink.
Above me, the jagged hole in the ice shrinks. The light grows fainter. Shadows dance across the fractured surface, and I see him, Aslanov, standing on the ice, looking down at me.
Except… he’s not moving.
His eyes are empty. Hollow. Like he’s already gone.
I try to scream his name again, but the water steals the sound from my lips.
Another gunshot.
Everything shatters—
Aslanov
The echo of the gunshot rings in my ears.
I’m on my knees in the snow, my arms yanked behind my back, the bite of cold metal digging into my wrists. The winter air burns my lungs with each shallow breath, thick with the scent of gunpowder and blood. The world is silent. Too silent.
Snow drifts down in slow, heavy flakes, coating the ground in an untouched white, except for the dark stains seeping through it. Blood. My blood. It runs from a wound I can’t see, soaking into the ice beneath me.
A sound.
Soft footsteps crunching through the snow. Bare feet, light as a whisper.
I look up, and my heart stops.
Isabella.
She steps forward, the wind catching the hem of her dress. It should be white. It should be clean. But it’s soaked through with blood, her blood. It drips from the fabric, trailing behind her like ink spilling across a blank page. Marking her steps.
The storm howls around us, but she is silent.
Her lips move, forming my name, but no sound comes out. Her hands tremble, lifting a gun, a small, silver thing that gleams in the moonlight. The same moon that once bathed her in softness, in warmth. But here, it’s cold. Distant. A witness to something I don’t want to see.
‘‘Isabella,’’ I rasp, my throat raw. ‘‘Put it down.’’
Her shoulders shake. Her fingers tighten on the trigger.
Behind her, the shadows move, a shadow moves.
Her lips move again, a silent plea, a warning.
I lunge forward, fighting against the restraints, my body screaming in protest, but it’s useless. The chains bite deeper into my skin. I can’t reach her.
The gunshot shatters the silence.
And I fall.
The snow rushes up to meet me, but it’s no longer soft. It’s cold, merciless, endless. The sky above fades, the stars swallowed by the dark.
I gasp awake.
The air in the cell is thick with dampness, the scent of rust and stone pressing down on me. My body jerks violently, my pulse hammering, my breath ragged and uneven. My skin is damp with sweat, but the cold still seeps into my bones.
I press a shaking hand to my chest, the phantom pain of the bullet still there.
I never dreamed before. Not once. Sleep had always been a void; blank, empty, a place of nothingness.
But since being here, all I do is dream of her.
And every time, I lose her.
The weight of it claws at my ribs, sharp and suffocating. The ache in my chest has nothing to do with the cold or the bruises or the hunger.
Love is not a weakness. It is not the naive belief in a gentle hand or the soft promise of salvation. No, love is raw. Love is power. A force stronger than any chain, deeper than any wound. It’s the fire that burns through you, turning flesh into steel, spirit into iron.
Before her, I was a shadow. The darkness had no depth, and the world had no weight. I walked through it like a ghost, taking what I needed, breaking what I wanted, never truly feeling anything, because I didn’t have to.
I didn’t need anything.
Then she entered my life, a light that shone in ways I never expected, my solnyshko .
But this light, it didn’t burn away the darkness.
It consumed it. She didn’t soften me. She didn’t try to fix the pieces that were missing.
She made me stronger. She gave me purpose, a will that could not be bent, a fire that could not be extinguished.
I was always told love weakens. But my father was wrong: her love doesn’t make me weak. It makes me unstoppable.
I can feel it in my bones now, that pulse of strength. It doesn’t matter where I am or what they do to me. The chains, the blood, the lies, they all pale in comparison to the force inside me now.
I will never be defeated for I know love now.
They should be terrified, I’ll go to the depths of Hell for her.