36. Elena #3
“Once he knew what you were,” Oksana continues, voice tightening, “I couldn’t move forward until I had everything he wanted.
” Her finger jabs toward Alexei. “And right before I took it—” Her eyes swung back to me.
“You ruined it.” A sharp, unhinged laugh spills out of her. “You should’ve died that day.”
A chill crawls up my spine.
“But you didn’t,” she scoffs, almost fascinated. “Just like your mother… You don’t listen.” Behind her, Wendell smirks. “You took everything from me,” she rants, fury bleeding through now. “Years of planning. My revenge.” Her voice drops. “You will pay for that.”
The air shifts and grows heavier. More charged now.
Alexei moves in front of me fully now, his body a barrier, his presence solid and unyielding.
“I won’t apologize,” I assert, stepping with him, refusing to hide, “for killing a man who murdered my parents, tortured me, and tried to use me to hurt innocents.”
“I know,” she replies simply.
Which is worse.
“That’s why,” she adds, her gaze sliding to Alexei, “I won’t kill you yet.”
My stomach drops.
“I’m going to make you watch,” she informs cruelly, “while we take your husband first.”
Alexei’s hand finds my hip, guiding me behind him.
I don’t retreat. My hand grips his arm instead. Together. Always.
“Wendell,” she hums, almost sing-song. “If you please.”
“With pleasure.”
His eyes travel down toward the ground. And the ground answers.
It trembles.
Cracks spiderweb beneath our feet, sharp and sudden, splitting through stone with a violent shudder. Alexei shifts, trying to move me back, shield me?—
I don’t let go.
The stone softens. First it warps. Then it liquefies.
It moves like something alive, creeping, slithering, heatless but wrong, toward him.
Only toward Alexei.
It reaches his feet first and begins to cling to him despite his efforts to shake it off and avoid its advances.
He grunts, pulling back, dragging me with him, but it’s too fast. Too precise. The liquid cement climbs up over his ankles and locks him in. He can no longer move, as it pins him in place.
“Stop—stop!”
The word tears out of me before I can think, before I can measure anything. I move on instinct, slipping out from behind Alexei and into the open, planting myself in front of him like I can somehow become a wall strong enough to hold everything back.
“Elena, no—” he grunts.
The sound is wrong, strained, tight. I don’t have to look to know why, but I do anyway. The stone has climbed higher, swallowing his ankles, pressing in like a vice. His thighs flex, hard, powerful, as he tries to wrench himself free. The muscle in his jaw ticks.
Nothing gives. Not an inch.
A single finger lifts into the air.
Oksana.
The cracking at Alexei’s feet stills.
The ground, mid-shift, mid-crawl, freezes as if the world itself is waiting on her next breath. Her smile doesn’t change. It lingers, slow and patient, like she has all the time in the world.
Like she knows exactly what comes next.
Her eyes settle on me. Waiting. Not for an answer. For a plea.
I turn slightly. Alexei meets my gaze, and the smallest shake of his head cuts through me deeper than anything else in this moment.
Don’t.
It pulls me backward in time so fast it almost steals my footing.
The woods. The smell of dirt and gunpowder. Ivan standing there like death itself.
Run, Alexei told me then. Run while he held the line. Fifteen men. Maybe more. Guns raised. No way out.
He would have made it two steps. Maybe three. He would have fired. Taken a few with him.
And then…gone.
I didn’t run then. I don’t run now. Not when I can still change something.
“What if,” I offer, forcing each word out steady, controlled, even as my pulse hammers against my ribs, “I could give you what you want?”
Oksana laughs. It’s sharp. Dismissive. Final. “There isn’t anything you could offer me that I would want.”
“But I can,” I press, letting my voice tilt, light, almost mocking. A mirror of her own tone.
Something in her expression flickers. It’s small, but it is real. It shifts enough to prove she is interested despite what she wants me to believe.
An opening. One I am going to take.
“Wendell isn’t the only one here with abilities,” I tell her.
She scoffs and rolls her eyes. “I know exactly what you can do. Visions of past and future. I’m not interested.”
“That’s not all.”
The words come faster now, sharper, before she can shut the door completely. My gaze flicks, brief, willful, toward Wendell.
“He’s not the only one who gained something new.”
Her brow arches, a flicker of curiosity sharpening into something more interested; something edged, almost dangerous. “Is that so?”
I nod, careful, controlled. Not too eager. Not desperate. Even though I am.
Because this…this was never supposed to happen like this.
Alexei and I had planned for this. The secret. The advantage. The one thing we held back until the exact moment it would matter most.
This wasn’t it.
But none of that matters if he doesn’t make it out of here. Not when the echo of Inanna’s words still lingers in the back of my mind.
One will fall.
Not him. Not like this.
“I can give you what you’ve spent years working toward,” I continue. “I can give you your revenge against Ivan.” The lie rolls off my tongue smoothly.
Her eyes narrow. “How?”
I swallow once, steadying my breath. “I don’t see anymore,” I answer, slowly.
“I can… reach.” I pause, contemplating my next words, until the idea forms in my mind.
“I can call the dead.” The silence is deafening around us.
“I can speak to them.” I force the next part out without hesitation.
“It’s how I found this place. Not because of contacts or clues. My mother told me.”
The words land clean. Believable. Because there’s enough truth woven into them to make the lie hold.
She doesn’t need to know I can’t call anything back from the grave or talk to them. Only that I can make her believe I can.
My eyes flick to Alexei again. His expression is tight, composed, but I see it, the strain, the pain he’s trying to hide as the stone tightens around him.
“Spare my husband,” I blurt, and this time the plea isn’t entirely forced, “and I’ll give you what I took from you.”
Her lips twitch. “I’m considering,” she ponders at last.
It’s not a yes. But it’s not a no.
“You wanted him to see you,” I continue, pressing forward before she could pull away. “To see what you became. To see that you took everything from him. That you have me—” I gesture faintly to myself, “—at your mercy.”
Her eyes sharpen.
“This is your chance,” I finish. “But I won’t do it if you kill him.”
No wavering. No softness. A line drawn clean between us.
She inhales slowly. Then smiles. “Alright,” she agrees.
Relief doesn’t come. Not yet.
“You have a deal.”
My chest loosens…barely.
“I won’t kill Alexei.” She steps closer, and something in that smile promises I should have asked for more. “Cross me,” she adds softly, “and the deal is off.”
A flicker of movement catches my attention.
Wendell.
Surprise, brief, sharp, before it smooths out into something unreadable as she looks at him. Whatever passes between them is silent, but it’s enough. Enough for him to fall back in line.
“How does it work?” she asks.
“I have to touch you,” I explain. “To bring you in.”
Suspicion flickers across her face. “Don’t try anything?—”
“I wouldn’t risk his life,” I snap.
That part is true. Completely.