I spat out the gag and drew in urgent gasps that felt dangerously close to becoming hacking sobs, my eyes still watering uncontrollably. “Zemfirka, you need to untie me now. Let me fix the embroidery.”

“You know I can’t do that. It would be treason.” Shifting her gaze back to Mikhail, she carefully tweezed the dirt and gravel from his wound, wiping up the blood that welled free with each shallow breath. “I don’t know what you are, but tell me what I should do. Quickly.”

“Please. I’m the only one who can save him.”

She looked at me hesitantly and reached for my wrist.

“What are you doing?” Lieutenant Dronov demanded, leaning over the wagon’s door. “I told you not to take her gag off.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Zemfirka cast her eyes downward, adjusting her glasses on her nose’s narrow bridge. “I just wanted to know if she was the one to originally tend to the deserter’s wound.”

“Don’t concern yourself with that. Just stabilize him for transport.” Dronov turned to me. “I’ll deal with this one.”

As he lowered the door to the wagon, cold steel nipped against my palm. My fingertips tested its shape—a thin pick that terminated in a teardrop-shaped blade.

A scalpel.

34

Resting against my palms, the scalpel felt as precious as an icon, imbued with a far greater power than the tempered steel it was composed of. I curled my fingers around the tool, maneuvering it so that the handle lay flat against my inner wrist and the blade pointed upward.

Thank you, I mouthed to Zemfirka, but she had already turned away.

As Lieutenant Dronov tried to force the rag back into my mouth, I bit at his fingers, trying to draw blood. He slapped me hard enough that my head cracked sideways and sparks flew across my vision. The metallic tang of my own blood welled in my mouth, sharp and bizarrely thrilling, spurring my heartbeat into a violent pounding. My limbs trembled with nervous energy, and I strained against my bonds like a dog on a taut leash, my nerves screaming at me to fight him, hurt him, even if it meant using my own nails and teeth.

“Hardly behavior suiting a duchess,” Dronov hissed, righting the rope that held the wadded cloth in place. He wrenched me from the wagon so violently that I nearly landed on the ground, his fingers digging into my armpits with such force, I thought he’d dislocate my shoulders from their sockets. My bound ankles struggled to gain purchase on the loose soil, and when that failed, I let my limbs go limp and imagined myself as a boulder or a rooted tree, something solid and unmoving.

Swearing, he dropped me. A hard, bruised ache climbed my tailbone as I landed on the ground, and I coiled over myself to protect my head and face from the blows I feared would come next. But instead, he just dragged me up again, and this time slung me over his shoulder as though I were nothing more than a dressed deer, something gutted and senseless, whose only worth was to die.