RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE - The House of Dimitrescu

Chapter 30 - The End of Peace

Y/N looked up, hardly daring to breathe, and out of the darkness, Zoya came stumping forwards, a thick, winter cloak wrapped tightly around her as she rattled a ring of keys between her gloved hands.

'Zoya...' Y/N sighed as relief washed over him, and the Grand Chambermaid quickly set key to lock, unlocking the gate and moving swiftly through, her flat gaze quickly appraising the grubby, blood-stained crowd behind Y/N.

'Is this all of them?' She asked briskly, motioning to the darkness behind her. Maids wrapped in thick coats came hurrying forwards out of the darkness, carrying blankets and cloaks in their arms as they went to the prisoners.

'Most of them.' Y/N answered. 'Some of them... some of them...' Zoya seemed to read the truth from his eyes, and she laid a soft hand on his face, looking deep into his eyes as she gave him a reassuring half-smile.

'You did your best.' She told him firmly. 'These people will owe their lives to you, and that is enough. You did more than anyone could have expected of you.' From behind them, there came a sharp cry, and Y/N turned to see one of the maids break into a run, cloaks and blankets cascading from her arms as she flew to Alexandru, hugging the pale, tall man tightly to her as his arms went swiftly around her, hanging on almost as if in disbelief that she was real.

'Her brother.' Zoya said by way of explanation, and Y/N felt a small flame of hope welling up inside him as he watched the pair clutching each other like drowning sailors.

'It... it was worth it just to see that...' he murmured softly, but even as the words left his mouth, there came more cries, as more family were reunited across the cavern. Sisters, brothers, wives, husbands, fathers, mothers and more. 

Zoya let them be for a moment, basking in their reunion, before she clapped her hands sharply, and the maids hurried back to work, wrapping the prisoners' arms around their shoulders hand helping them up, staggering with them out into the darkness, to where a half-dozen horse-drawn carts and wagons lay waiting, filled with the rest of the household staff, warm blankets and more clothes, and enough rations and supplies to see them over the mountain passes. 

As the prisoners were loaded onto the caravan, Zoya and Y/N did a last sweep of the caverns, Y/N still holding the Dagger of Death's Flowers in one hand, Zoya, her ring of keys. 

'You had a set of keys all this time?' Y/N asked her in disbelief, once the idea had properly registered in his mind. 'All this time and you didn't tell me?!?'

'Keep your voice down!' Zoya snapped at him. 'It's not something I like to brandish around, and it's only the keys to the kitchen storerooms and the front gates. Do you really think I would have bothered her ladyship every time I needed to open the doors for a delivery?' She glanced at the pitted, iron key she had used to unlock the cavern gates, her expression somber.

'I got this one from my daughter.' She said quietly. 'She once tried to free them too.' Y/N sensed the pain behind her voice, and let the subject drop, completing the circuit of the caverns before heading out to rejoin the others in the snow. 

It was bitingly cold outside the cave, the icy wind ripping at the sheets covering the wagons and caravans, and inside, Y/N saw the prisoners and the maids hunkered down, mostly out of sight, wrapped tightly in thick blankets. Here and there, a dim lantern's light flickered off the polished barrel of a rifle or a pistol and the faces that Y/N saw between the folds of fabric looked pale and set. 

He accompanied Zoya to the front of the caravan, sheathing the Dagger of Death's Flowers beside the chain at his belt, and when they reached the front, Zoya turned to him, gesturing up at the dark silhouette of the mountains in the distance.