Cradling his head in my arms, I lifted my gaze to the sky, searching for a sign. An answer for why these terrible things happened over and over.

“Voserka,” I shouted. “If you’re there, show yourself!”

Just the soft lapping of the river and the breeze. From their roost in the guelder rose, the wrens continued to sing.

“Kosa, Voyna, Seredina.” The names tore from my throat in a scream. “Someone. Anyone. I don’t care. Are you there?”

If the Three Sisters were watching, it was with the same indifference as Voserka.

My shoulders slumped under the weight of Vanya’s death.

“You are no mother.” Closing my eyes, I pressed my forehead to the crown of Vanya’s head. “You are no sisters.”

Whether one or three, the only thing they propagated was suffering.

At first, all I felt was despair so deep it seemed on the verge of swallowing me whole in its depths. Then suddenly it was as though a candle flared to life in my head, and in an instant, I could sense it—a vast and uncontrollable force more palpable than that of any bogatyr or monster I had come across.

My eyes flew open.

The Unclean Force.

Raising my head, I searched the looming trees for its source. Where was it? Who was it?

“Please, I’ll do anything if you bring him back to me.” My voice broke, and the final words left my lips in a thin croak. “Just bring him back. Please.”

Silence, and the river ahead, and the ruby droplet of a sun that hung suspended on the water.

My breath caught in my lungs. The presence I sensed wasn’t coming from around me—it rose from within. I felt it resonate in my blood, and the pounding beat of my heart, and the trembling of my limbs as I held Vanya’s head against myself.

A wild laugh escaped my lungs. How could we be so blind? We had been such fools. The Unclean Force had been within us—all of us—this whole time. It always had been.

All we had to do was reach out and grasp it.

My breath quickened into urgent panting as I gathered my rushnyk in my arms and used my amber brooch’s sharp edge to free a loose thread. Half in delirium, I tore at the cloth, ripping the embroidery free of it with my fingers and teeth, and unwinding the red floss into an overflowing mound.

My birth mother had not been a koldunia. She had simply wanted to mourn my father in the only way she knew how, and to an outsider with vulgar intentions, that had been enough to condemn her. If she had sensed this power within her at the end, she had turned away from it rather than sully herself.

I would not turn away. I knew what I had to do.

Once I had gathered a substantial amount of thread, I broke the pin off of the brooch and wrapped the strand around its end, forming a rudimentary needle. I began with his neck, embroidering a garland of diamonds and interlocking arrows around his torn throat. The thread kept slipping from the needle, forcing me to retie it. His skin was already so cold.