His doors were locked, and Lyubov had put the fear of Tajna in me, so I dared not knock.  I popped the lock.

The rooms stood empty.

I could not possibly be in trouble for breaking into his rooms. He was the one who had sent for me; he must have assumed I would do that.

Sent for me to what end? And why with so much attendant secrecy? Sanya was not one for melodrama (unless you considered defenestrating one’s cousins melodramatic); he must have had his reasons. Perhaps, after what I’d done, he did not want to be seen with me. Perhaps he had discovered something that could only be revealed in private. Perhaps this was some kind of ruse; perhaps by stepping into this room, I had stepped on the trigger of the fox trap. Perhaps he wanted to throw me out a window, so he’d lured me to an upper story. Perhaps—

I could go on thinking of scenarios forever if I let myself, but nothing would induce the truth to reveal itself to me before its time. Instead, I tried to busy myself with an examination of my surroundings.

Sanya’s rooms were smaller than they should have been. Smaller than mine, and I wasn’t even a legitimate member of the family with parents to campaign for my fair treatment. The decorations were sparse, which was no surprise. I didn’t go into the bedchamber except to check that he wasn’t in there, but the sitting room just had two chairs on either side of the one impressive fixture of the space—a bearskin rug that must have been over a hundred years old, as that was the last time there were any bears in Gorakino. The shelves on the walls were half-empty. He’d probably even read the books on them.

I thought back to the night we became hunting partners. It had started similarly: me breaking into a room, poking around books I shouldn’t have.

Some of the books didn’t have titles on the spines. Some of the books didn’t have spines at all, but one that did was a slim volume titled “The Romance of Starovsk.”

I knew that. That was Zhdan Groznyj’s story. Well, not his story, but his story was in it. The most important, the most interesting part of the story. I pulled the book from the shelf. The pages were soft, unsmudged, delicately lettered. There were books printed now with machines in big cities, but this one was hand-lettered. It didn’t look old, though. The pages were still bright, the colors, too, but the cover was worn like it had been repurposed from an older book.

I took it and sat down on one of the spindly, uninviting chairs.

I was three-quarters of the way through the familiar story and had certainly missed dinner by the time the door opened and Sanya walked in.

It was still my instinct to hide the book, so I snapped it shut and slid it into my pocket. “Hi, Sanya,” I said, standing up, heart already beginning to beat faster.

He didn’t look happy to see me. He looked worn and tired, cloak still on, dirty from the hunt. He closed the door behind him. “You’re here.”

“You sent for me.”

He sighed, as though he were disappointed that I had followed his instructions, and began the process of removing his outer layers. “I told Lyubov Maksimovna after supper.”

“So… why am I here?”

He didn’t look at me, but I saw his lips press together in frustration as he hung his cloak on its peg.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted out. “Listen, about that night. I was trying to get a rise out of you, and I took it too far. It won’t happen again.”

His brow creased as he folded his gloves carefully and tucked them into a drawer. “What?”

“Sanya, don’t make me say it. I know… I know you don’t want to be my partner because… of what I did. But please. I need you to be my partner. You’re the only one who understands, and I can’t do anything without you.”

He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. When he opened them, he crossed the room and sat down on the spindly chair opposite me. “I can’t do it,” he said, looking me dead in the eye.

I stayed standing, unsure what to do with my arms. “Why not? I know you don’t believe me, but I won’t do it again. What can I do to prove to you that I won’t do it again?”

He didn’t respond right away, but he canted his head. “What are you talking about?”

“You really want me to say it? You know what I’m talking about.” I started throwing my arms out in dramatic exasperation but decided mid-flail that this was not the best way to prove I could exert better impulse control in the future, so I drew my arms back in abruptly.

“Iyu?”

“Okay, if that’s what you need.” I took a deep breath. “I kissed you. It was a mistake, and I’m sorry.”

He kept staring at me, and I squirmed like a worm on a hook.

“Please, Sanya, put me out of my misery.”

“And that was a mistake?”

“Well… Yes, of course. I just got caught up in pestering you, because, I don’t know, I thought you had fun with it, too, but I’ll stop, because I need your help, and I’d rather have you with me than to keep picking at you all the time. So please come back.”

He looked away, finally, and rubbed his face with his hand. “Iyu, I can’t. That’s not what I—”

I sank into the chair across from him. “Please, Sanya. There must be something I can do. I’m begging you.”

He looked up at the ceiling, sucking his lips in. “It’s not about…”

“Not about what?” I resisted the urge to put my hand on his knee.

“It’s too dangerous. You don’t know how dangerous. He’s going to find out.”

“Who? What’s dangerous? Who’s going to find out I kissed you?”

“It’s not about that, Iyu. That wasn’t the mistake.”

My heart made a series of strange and unfamiliar flips. “Then wha—”

“Vasilij Artyomovich knows.” His eyes snapped to me, so sharp I rocked back onto my heels. “He has cronies everywhere. One of them found the bottle of gnila.”

As he said the words, I saw the bottle rolling under my cot. “What?” I said dumbly, blood only belatedly beginning to turn cold.

He nodded.

“But why… That was weeks ago. It was gone from my pocket one day, but I found it under my bed, so I thought… But that was weeks ago.” If he knew weeks ago, I should be dead by now. Unless he was protecting Sanya, and that’s why… “He told you to stay away from me.”

His face crumpled. He looked miserable. He shook his head.

“No? Then what—then we should go.” I couldn’t stop myself then, I grabbed his knee. “We were going to have to go eventually, anyway. We’ve learned so much; if we have to go now, it’s not the worst thing that could happen. How did you find out? If someone told you, maybe they know more.”

“Vasilij Artyomovich told me.”

“What? When?”

He covered my hands with one of his. “He told me when it happened. Weeks ago.” He saw my mouth open and put up his hand. “Let me finish. He told me he knew what happened in Khorizova. He told me I was to keep hunting with you, and I was to tell him everything we did. Everything you did. If I didn’t, he would tell Knyaz Artyom and Knyaz Aksana both everything he knew.”

I felt as though someone had scraped my insides out. “What did you tell him?” My voice didn’t even sound like my own.

“I tried to tell him nothing. I gave him accounts of the minutiae of our days. I tried to dissuade you from doing more. But he knows there’s more to it. He thinks you’re planning something. I asked Mariya Artymovich to assign us different partners so he couldn’t use me to get to you.”

“You didn’t tell him about…?”

His hand tightened on mine. “I would never tell him anything.”

I took a deep breath and lowered my forehead to the knee where our hands were clasped. “Well,” I said. “We knew we were going to have to go eventually.”

“Iyu.” He pulled his hand away and took my shoulders, sinking to his knees in front of me. “It’s too dangerous.”

“It’s too dangerous to stay here!” I said, following him to the ground. “Any time he could decide he’s had enough and take either of us. We have to leave. Why didn’t you tell me before? This whole time he’s known?”

“I didn’t tell you because I knew how you would react” His fingers dug into my shoulders. “I knew you would want to go now, before we’re ready. But you’re right. Now, you have to go.”

“I’m not going without you. I need you. I don’t know how to do it by myself.”

“No. Go home. Tell Knyaz Aksana you have the returner. Tell her you got it for her, so she could make the emetic. If Vasilij Artyomovich tries to turn you in, then he won’t be telling Knyaz Aksana anything she doesn’t already know.”

“Sanya, that’s not the plan. I didn’t come here just so I could run home and go right back to—”

“You’re going to get yourself killed.” He shook my shoulders. “I asked you to come here to tell you, you have to go. Vasilij Artyomovich is watching us all the time. He won’t let this go, no matter what I do.”

“I have to do this,” I said. “There’s no going back for me. Come with me.”

Sanya’s hands dropped, and he hung his head. When he looked back up at me, there was fear in his eyes. “Right now, he doesn’t know what you have planned. He only suspects you’re up to something. If we disappear now, it confirms his suspicions. You can go home. You’ve been here long enough without visiting home. You can go without raising suspicions.”

“Then what? I come back, and we’re right back here.”

“You don’t come back. You go to visit, and you decide to stay. You’re needed at home. If you give Knyaz Aksana the returner, she’ll make an excuse for you.”

“And after that?” My eyes cast about the room as though I’d find the answer somewhere on those half-empty shelves. “When will we meet? I don’t know if I can get a message to you here without it being intercepted. I can’t just go back. I have to—”

“Iyu.” He put his palms on either side of my face and pointed me back towards him. “If you go out there and start teaching miryanins Tajna, he’ll find you. They will find you. They will kill you.”

“I have to do this. We have to do this, or the knyazes win; Vasilij Artyomovich wins.”

“Of course they win,” he snapped. “They will always win. It was a dream; that’s all this was. At some point, you must wake up.”

“It’s not. It’s not a dream. I’ve seen it happen, and if you could only see what I saw, you would believe like I do. We can do this; we’ve been making progress. We can make the returner; we can use zhiva. None of them use zhiva!”

“So we can teach miryanins how to kill our own families?”

“Of course not! This is to stop the killing. We’re teaching the miryanins how to stand on their own. We’re teaching the knyazes that they can’t start wars at their whim, that they can’t keep all of this for themselves; they can’t kill people just for realizing that the system is rigged; we see through them. Don’t you want them to know that? Don’t you want to teach them that your sister’s life isn’t a chip in a poker game?”

He searched my face, dark eyes impenetrable. Finally, he spoke: “I’ve lost too many people I loved already. I can’t stand to lose you, too.”

“Sanya—”

He pulled me into him and kissed me, lips hard on mine, stanching the flow of my argument. When he pulled back, his eyes were wet. “Please do this for me.”

I was shocked into silence, mouth hanging open dumbly. When words wouldn’t come, I just rocked forward and pressed my face into his chest.