At the end of the storage cavern, we reached a winding staircase cut into the limestone. There was no banister, not even a rope or chain to grasp onto. I had to take the stairs slowly, one at a time, testing my footing with every step.

A door confronted us at the top of the stairs. I tested the knob, but it refused to budge.

“Let me see if I can get this open,” Vanya said.

As he lifted his hands, I grabbed his wrist.

He looked back at me, furrowing his brows. “What?”

“I...” I moistened my lips, afraid to admit just how terrified I was that something might happen to him. If Koschei captured us, he wouldn’t kill Vanya, not after seeing my embroidery. I had brought Vanya back to life, but what if in doing so, I had only guaranteed him a future of pain and terror?

As if sensing my fear, Vanya placed his hand over mine. He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles, his breath warming my cold fingers.

“Everything’s going to be all right,” he murmured, his voice low and reverberating in the staircase’s narrow confines. “I’ll never let them hurt you.”

It’s you I’m worried about, I wanted to tell him, but to say so aloud felt like tempting fate.

He placed his hands upon the door, and straightaway the wood began to fissure and distort. I held my breath as the groaning of wood and twisting metal filled the air, my heart knocking against my ribs as I waited for shouts of alarm to rise from the other side of the door. Hinges snapped as twigs grew from the wood, bursting into bud and leaf, and the entire door collapsed into a pile of boards that looked halfway to becoming branches. There was no one on the other side.

Vanya stepped quickly through the doorway and peered around. He waved me into the windowless room.

Crates and barrels were stacked against the walls, while shelves contained bottles and clay crocks. Wood shavings crunched beneath our feet as we crossed the room.

“Looks like medical or chemistry supplies,” Vanya said, glancing into one of the open crates. “I don’t think there’s anything in here that can help us. Except...”

Trailing off, he retrieved a small oil lamp from within one of the crates. “I suppose this will be a little less primitive than carrying a torch around?”

Along with several more oil lamps, the crate contained extra wicks, glass shades, and oil. While Vanya filled and lit the oil lamp, I returned to the staircase and pitched the torch into the darkness. There was nothing that could catch fire down below, and if the flame wasn’t smothered in the initial descent, surely it would be extinguished once it struck the cavern’s damp limestone floor.

The door across the room led to a brick corridor. In spite of the modernity of the unlit electrical lights lining the passage, the flickering glow of our oil lamp made me feel as though I had been transported back to the wilderness, following Galina through the ice-choked ruins.