While my father labored on his hands and knees in the silver mines, she had taken odd jobs around the village. I remembered going with her for hours from house to house. Her skill as a seamstress had been what led her to the homes of the wealthy, even taking her as far as the Troika temple’s sanctuary, where she’d spend hours repairing antique altar cloths and holy rushnyky. She had been a faithful attendee, too, hadn’t she? Never missing a service, her knees bowed in prayer.

I know in my heart, they are one and the same, she had said as she stepped past the snowbound trees. And that they are listening. Whatever you do to me, may they pay it back threefold.

The memory took me aback. What was that? That hadn’t been in the village. It had happened when we were still traveling on the road from Serebrograd, this time on foot through the forests and mountains.

Because someone had been following us that entire time. They had been hunting us.

My thoughts scattered as a train roared down the track below. The roof shuddered in the resounding whistle and clang of bells. I didn’t hear the creak of the ladder’s rungs or the sound of the skylight opening, so when Vanya eased onto the platform beside me, it was as though he had materialized from the night itself.

“Something on your mind?” he asked, stretching out his legs.

I swallowed hard. What did he see in my face?

“Too much,” I said with a weak laugh.

“Me too.” He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I can’t stop thinking about Kraylesa.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s grotesque.”

I had no response to that. We fell into silence, watching the trains pass below.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Even as he spoke, his gaze remained on the scenery beyond, the glow of streetlamps reflecting in his eyes. “About what Inga Elenovna said?”

I sighed, running a hand through my hair. “I just...I know something terrible happened.”

“To your mother?” Vanya ventured quietly.

“Yes, and I don’t want to remember,” I said, surprised by the harshness in my voice. “I don’t want to think about that time ever again.”

“I’d want to remember if something happened to me.”

“It’s different for you.” I glanced over at him. “You already know everything.”

A thin smile played on his lips. “That’s not quite true. I never knew my mother.”

“But you know your past. You know who you are.”

“Sometimes I wonder about that.” Still smiling, he regarded the city lights. “When I was a child, I was so scared, do you know that? I didn’t have a mother, and none of the other kids let me forget that. And even the adults never accepted me as one of their own, not really. Not even after my father died. We have words for someone like me, and by five or six, I had been called them all. So, I learned to laugh it off when they hurt or insulted me, and after a while, I learned how to use that humor like a weapon. But the truth is, I feel like I haven’t changed at all. That deep down, there’s still that scared, angry boy.”