“Thank you.” He drew the embroidered fabric over himself. “At least I won’t die from the cold.”

I settled back, trying to drift off. After lying awake for almost thirty minutes, my skin crawling with anxious tension, I fell into a restless sleep.

In my dream, I was back in Vanya’s apartment during that hazy time of day when you couldn’t tell if it was dusk or dawn. Vanya sat in the chair by the unlit fireplace, dressed in the clothes he had been wearing on the day we met. He wouldn’t acknowledge me. His green eyes were focused on a stain on the wall.

We didn’t speak. As a shadow edged across the room, his shirt’s gold embroidery tarnished until it was as dark as ink.

“I’m so tired,” Vanya mumbled, but I didn’t think he was talking to me. In the distance, a bell began to toll, and the shadow swelled until it touched him. “I just want to sleep.”

Suddenly, I jolted awake, startled by loud voices. For a moment, I thought that the yelling was a part of my dream. A harsh light shone in my eyes, blinding me.

“Show us your hands!” a man shouted. “Your hands! Put up your hands!”

Shapes emerged from the forest’s edge—men carrying long-arms, their faces garish in the red glow of our fire’s embers.

Mikhail shifted out from under my rushnyk, began to rise, and then abruptly sat down again. He lifted his arms in the air, his gray eyes flickering from man to man. “We don’t want any trouble.”

“Is that so?” One soldier laughed sardonically, eying Mikhail’s sage-green greatcoat. “You don’t want any trouble. Some way to greet your comrades, isn’t it?”

Vanya groaned, still in the clutches of sleep. Squinting into the harsh lantern light, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Whuuuh?”

“I said show me your hands!”

I followed Mikhail’s example, and Vanya, evidently awake enough now to recognize basic commands, raised his hands as well.

A mustached man in a peaked hat strode forward, close enough that I could smell the musk of tobacco smoke and sweat clinging to his body. He picked up the rifle Mikhail had leaned against the cavern wall, turning it over in his hands as though to admire its craftsmanship.

“I suppose your uniforms weren’t the only thing you stole from us, hmm?” Underneath the glossy leather brim of his cap, the soldier’s dark-amber eyes regarded us—flat, intelligent eyes with heavy lids, the eyes of a bloodhound.

My stomach dropped at the sight of heavy-jowled features—he had been on the train, and Zemfirka had greeted him as Lieutenant Dronov with a nervous titter and unease in her eyes. In private, she had told me that out of all the soldiers who had served in the Serebrograd brigade with her and Dima, Lieutenant Dronov had been the most unpredictable—and the most cruel.

“Listen, we can explain—” Vanya began, and was about to say more when Dronov slammed the stock of his rifle into his stomach. Collapsing forward, Vanya hacked for breath.