YAGA | ✓

EIGHTEEN - PART ONE

•••

DIMITRI WATCHED Kazimir cradle the child to his heart, murmuring a solemn song before setting the boy down in the crib. They'd returned to Salovo mere hours before after an urgent message from Nevena had arrived, carried by an exhausted distant cousin, a thirteen-year-old that Dimitri had guessed, after careful eavesdropping, was called Christo.

He dimly recognised the boy and didn't ask any questions, instead setting a steaming pot of tea on the table and telling him to rest. A while later, Dimitri regretted that he, too, hadn't sat down before setting off - the cold had gotten to him and earned a hacking cough that rattled his lungs.

The room, hastily arranged to prohibit the child from gaining any illness, was a pleasant cool that contrasted from both the sweltering heat of the rest of the house and the brutal cold of outside. A rug, coarse but warm beneath their feet, as well as heavy curtains in the windows and cushions on all of the chairs.

Despite the chair having been repainted, Dimitri could still see specks of darkness beneath the brown. They'd taken refuge in the room Kazimir had once shared with Lilyana, the cursed room, he believed.

But he could see how exhausted his old friend was, so he didn't speak of the devils curling themselves up in the cracks between the plaster, where the wind poured through, barely drowned out with the crackle of the indignant flame. It, by some miracle, was still burning against all odds, denying him the need to wear the Saint-forsaken cloak that the winter had forced him into wearing almost everywhere.

If one had ignored what had so blatantly happened in this very room, the atmosphere would've been a pleasant one, untarnished by much worries or grieving. But, to Dimitri, the room stank of blood.

Nevena had claimed that Yaga had dragged Lilyana to the camp in the forest after taking her from this very room. He didn't necessarily believe her, and he didn't want to, however, until the witches were destroyed, he would have to deal with a potential murderer by his side. Besides, after all that had happened, death was nothing new.

The hunter had to eat.

Though Nevena's trial had turned up nothing, he couldn't help but think that there was something hideously, viciously, wrong about her. Her face was like a mask, the seams jagged and frayed, threatening to split any second. Dimitri's mind kept going back to the night that he'd met her, though discovered her seemed more appropriate. He thought of how she'd carried on talking as if nothing was wrong, despite being, rather clearly, stabbed in the face. His mother had a name for those sorts of women - volkchisi. Wolves. Or to put it simply, bitches.

He'd hated the way Yelena had acted toward Yaga, all those months ago. It was ironic to think that she'd been right all along, after all the times that he'd defended her, all the times that he'd ignored his mother's yowling.

But the gods were cruel like that, with all their sweet, silken lies and fragile existence. Yaga had taught him that gods were not kind beings, and that the only god that came when you called was one that you would never want to see. It was one that seemingly haunted Yelena, leaving her locked in her rooms, screaming in the dead of night as shards of broken mirrors cut her feet and the gilded curtains muffled the noise from reaching the street.

The thought made him want to cry.

But then he remembered what his mother had been before, and he felt almost relieved, as bad of a son as it made him. His nails dug into the oak arm of his chair, tearing off tiny shavings of wood as he slowly let go, exhaling deeply. The smell of smoke made its way into his nose, and the cough rose once more, and he slumped over, exhaustion hitting him along with a sudden sweltering heat.

"I have to go," he told Kazimir, who nodded, his attention completely dominated by the sleeping bundle in the crib.

Dimitri smiled weakly at the child, leaving the room hastily.

•••

In the message, Nevena had told him that Yaga was dead.

He didn't want to believe it - despite all that she'd done, all that she'd failed to do, and all that he knew that she would do, somewhere deep down, he'd hoped that she could be redeemed, that he would wake up and find it was all just one terrible dream. Truth was a dirty thing - a mistress that one toyed with, never bringing her to the light until the dark was snatched from you.

She was in Baba Jana's house, he'd been told in a note left on his doorstep. Nevena had handwriting that resembled her - beautiful and curling, but when Dimitri looked closer, he noticed the slight shakiness in the penmanship, scratches where the ink hadn't quite flowed and other parts where the line was too thick, in danger of blotting. There had been no wax seal, nothing announcing the household of origin, or whether it was even Lyovan, though the script was evident. For all he knew, it could've been some poor Seskian devil, or an Oriyan troublemaker.

For all he knew.

In the centre of Salovo, mist curled around the buildings in a thick veil, mingled with smoke puffing from the chimneys of the few taverns that there were - three, that had patrons and were relatively known.

Drakasya - the most respectable one, where men went after work, or to celebrate, and where the barmaids were paid well enough that they didn't need to whore themselves out after closing hours.

Tartrak - where the only patrons were dirty old men drinking equally dirty old drinks, but at least it manned by more of them. The only barmaid was the owner's wife, a ruddy woman who scrubbed the bar raw every night to try to dislodge the grime - without avail.

And the worst one, the one that Dimitri had that he would never step into - Zlaty Kral.

The Golden King.

He passed it now, tucked behind in the middle of a smaller road, but still very noticeable to anyone walking in the street. Silks from foreign lands were conveniently draped across the already-small window, masking the moans and screams that escaped from the locked doors, and no light passed through, for Dimitri knew that inside, it was only impenetrable darkness.

He'd been inside once, a year ago, with his father, tending to a dying young woman festering a child that was sucking the life out of the wretched girl. They'd managed to save the child, but the whore was too sickly, too late. She died in Dimitri's arms, cursing the child and the Saints. A week later, the child died, too, contracting an illness that engulfed its tiny body and left it to rot in the gutter. His muscles went numb as he recalled the image, and he pressed on, sharply turning the corner to Baba Jana's house.

Salovo didn't have a hospital, of sorts - only the capital, along with larger towns had those. Healthcare here usually relied on the Doktor, but now with him gone, carriages were forced to race towards Nova Kasya as quickly as they could with bags of money willing to fork out on expensive treatment. It was no secret that the Doktor, too, had set high prices, but there was no comparing that to those in the city. His father's work relied more on natural remedies than newfangled medicines - securing the old cures rather than experimenting with the modern.

Dimitri wondered what Yaga's body would look like. He wondered whether the colour would drain from her amber hair, whether her eyes would be as warm as they were in life. He wondered whether they would be warm at all, or whether they would be dead and cold and glassy like his father's.

He wondered.

That was, until, he saw the bloodied handprints on the glass that hadn't been scrubbed down yet, and the blood splattered all across the walls.

Then, he wondered whether there was anything left of her, at all.

•••