Iskra
Over the following weeks there was no need to wonder what was happening.
Men came and went through the house at all hours.
The news reported explosions on the outskirts of Chernograd.
Body parts were showing up in various locations across the city—the kind of message that didn’t require translation.
Vadim’s retaliation was not silent. It was purposefully loud, deliberate and visible. A full team had gone to Chechnya to eradicate Tolam’s network at the source.
I didn’t usually know the details. But I had learned to piece things together—from conversations beside open doorways, fragments carried through windows left ajar, the occasional hour spent at the top of the staircase where sound travelled better than anyone seemed to account for.
Tau always caught me.
Those dark eyes finding me without searching, the way they always did.
He never said anything. He didn’t need to.
He simply held my gaze until I slinked away, the chastisement delivered entirely without words.
And since Vadim had never called me out on it, I had to presume Tau hadn’t reported back the way Radovan would have.
The distraction was welcome.
It stopped me from thinking too carefully about what would happen in five months when I gave birth to his son or daughter.
It stopped me from wondering where he spent his nights.
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The tiny outfit hung on the smallest clothes hanger I’d ever seen.
The onesie was a knitted cream creation with a brown baby deer on it.
The buttons looked wooden but when I touched one it was smooth plastic, running from the shoulder to the hip.
It had a matching brown hat—suitable for a boy or a girl.
“Cute. You should get it,” Tau said, leaning in before he straightened and scanned the store.
“Everything is cute,” I said, smoothing my hand down the outfit before stepping back from it with a sigh. “And it won’t be long until I find out whether it’s a boy or a girl.”
Everything outside the house had returned to cold and calm. The external danger neutralised. Other factions warned. Vadim had not laid his father to rest until the work was finished—the church had not been pleased about the delay. The Pakhan had not cared.
I moved to the table display.
“Do you have a girl? Family at home?” I asked, not looking up from the clothing that made my chest ache.
When he didn’t reply I tore my eyes away from the cardigans to stare at him.
His lips had tightened. His eyes were fixed on the back wall display—not seeing it, looking at something further away than the shop.
“A lifetime ago,” he said, through clenched teeth.
I didn’t ask anything further.
We wandered through the rest of the store while I collected ideas—colours, textures, the softness of things made for people not yet ready for the world.
A nursery that Vadim was too busy to think about preparing.
It should have been a happy afternoon for any expectant mother, browsing small things in a warm shop while the city went about its business outside.
Part of me felt disconnected from all of it.
It was the only way to protect my heart.
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On the way back I clutched my handbag, telling myself not to look at the scan picture.
I looked anyway.
Radovan and Tau were discussing their schedule in the front. I flicked the leather flap back and slipped my hand into the side compartment, pulling the picture out carefully.
With everything that had been happening I had only seen Ruslan a handful of times. Each visit brief. Managed. The kind of time that reminded me how much had been taken rather than how much remained.
My parents knew about the pregnancy. They had never reached out. I hadn’t expected Galina to. But my mother—I had expected something from her. Anything.
I traced my finger over the plastic coating of the picture. The tiny heartbeat that had pulsed on a screen. The hands becoming themselves.
I slipped it back into my bag and placed my hand over my bump.
I glanced out of the window.
A dark shadow fell over the car a fraction of a second before impact.
The truck hit us with a sound that was less like a crash and more like the world ending—metal against metal, the SUV lifting, rolling, the world tilting past the windows in a blur of sky and road and sky again. My neck snapped back and forth with each rotation.
Screaming. Shouting. I couldn’t tell whose.
Then warmth.
Blood, running from somewhere above my eye, tracking down across my face in a slow unhurried line.
My hand was still over my bump.
Clutching at the child I had spent months trying not to love.
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The constant beeping penetrated through to me and refused to stop.
I tried to open my eyes. Only one responded—fluttering before it opened to a glare of white light that made me close it again immediately.
My mouth was dry. Something held it open.
The accident.
I moved my hand. There was a pull from whatever was attached to it but I ignored it and pressed my palm flat against my stomach.
Softer.
The bulge was still there but it didn’t feel right. The weight of it was wrong. The presence I had grown accustomed to was gone.
I forced my eye open, desperate to find a face.
A nurse came rushing in.
Behind her—Vadim and Tau.
Tau had a dressing on his forehead, the white of it stark against his skin.
The nurse moved over me and blocked my view of them. Scrubs and equipment and the sharp efficient sounds of someone doing their job. More beeping. A strange cool sensation spreading from the back of my hand upward.
My eyes grew heavy.
The pain that had been waiting at the edges began to reach me—and then, as I recognised it, it began to ebb.
The nurse stepped back.
I saw their faces again.
The lifeless eyes.
And I knew.
My womb was empty.