More blood glistened on the pebbles lining the shore. I stopped at the river’s edge, searching the green water for any sign of him. For the first time since I had started running, I heard the birds singing.

A boot bristled from the mud nearby. Maybe Vanya’s, but more likely just twin to the one the mavka had stolen. I scooped it up to get a better look. It was far heavier than it should’ve been, like it was filled with stones.

I peered inside.

An uncontrollable scream swelled from my throat, and before I knew it, I had thrown the boot down. My fingers tangled in my hair, clawed at my cheeks. Tears welled from my eyes in an instant. I twisted my body away and collapsed to my knees, seized by grief so overwhelming, I thought it would tear me in two.

I felt strangled by the inevitability of Vanya’s death. If I hadn’t left with Mikhail, none of this would have happened. And then Vanya would have died during the riot in his village. Or afterwards, accused of being a koldun and butchered by his own neighbors.

Was it a curse or was it fate? Had the Goddess or the Three Sisters—let’s face it, Tomochka, they’re one and the same, aren’t they? All Tsarinas of Death—had they sanctioned this?

A large body sloshed through the river, tearing me from my thoughts. I watched, stupefied, as a shape emerged from beneath the waves. Milk-white skin. Loose, sleek curls of burgundy hair.

Before the being’s chest surfaced, my heart tremored with a brief hope that Vanya had heard my weeping and returned to me. But he did not have hair that fell halfway down his back or heavy, pendulous breasts.

The rusalka waded toward me, her eyes like banked embers. She held a dripping wool mound in her arms, the green cloth streaked with blood and algae. With infinite care, she laid it down on the shore beside where the boot had landed.

Another rusalka broke the surface, smaller than the other. She must have died so young. She brought a limp arm, detached from its partner and stippled with fish bites. It joined the rest of the pile.

My throat closed around the sob that rushed from my lungs, reducing the sound to a thin, watery moan. The Fraktsiya hadn’t just dumped Vanya’s body into the river. They had mutilated him so that he could never return, for even the rusalki were reborn whole.

An arm here. A leg there. Just a calf missing its ankle. Some dark, dripping handful crested with suckling leeches. A procession of rusalki came and went, each laying an offering onto the mound of flesh and stained wool.

Tears pouring down my face, I crawled over to the pile and laid a trembling hand upon Vanya’s limp fingers. The edges of his nail beds were a deep, bruised indigo, and two of his fingernails were broken. How could it be possible that just hours ago, this hand had touched me?