“I understand,” he murmured, taking my hand only long enough to kiss my fingers, those fingers that had brought him back. “I’ll return when this is over. Mikhail, too. This is not farewell.”

As soon as the door swished shut behind Vanya, a deep, numbing exhaustion fell over me. I sank onto the bench, cradling my forehead in my hand.

Wasn’t this what I had wanted all along? To come home?

Images passed through my mind. The corpses of suspected kolduny hanging from an oak tree. A crimson pool forming under Koschei’s headless body. Dronov writhing in the leaves, laughing uncontrollably until bloody tears rippled down his cheeks.

Vanya and I had blood on our hands. Blood that had already been spilled, and blood yet to come. How could I stay, knowing that I would be responsible for whatever happened next?

My birth mother had hidden that she was Strannik out of fear and necessity, and all these years, I had hidden in the wilderness, afraid to become a part of civilization. I was tired of hiding. I wanted to see a world untouched by the violence and hatred that had made me.

And a part of me—a part that I tried to bury deep inside myself so I could focus on Galina—desperately wanted to stay with Vanya. I cared about him deeply, and he offered the key to discovering my past and understanding my heritage. He could teach me Strannitsky, and perhaps together we could learn more about the special symbols adorning my mother’s embroidery.

But how could I ever leave?

“Toma?” Galina said, and I slowly lifted my head to find her standing next to me. The dirigible’s horn must have stirred her from her nap.

“What is it, Galechka?” My voice came out thick. I swallowed hard to clear it.

“I want to hunt for the rest of the beads.”

“Oh, okay,” I mumbled, trying to summon the energy to stand. “In a minute.”

Moisture trickled down my cheek. I looked at the ceiling, but there was no leak, and then a wretched sob escaped from deep inside me, somewhere so far within I hadn’t realized it existed until now, not really.

“Why are you crying?” Galina asked, her own lower lip trembling.

“I’m not crying.” I wiped the tears away and then the thin line of mucus that escaped one nostril. “I just...I miss Vanya.”

He said he’d come back, but that could be months or years from now, and in the time between, he’d lose his brightness in my memory, and I’d forget his jokes and the rolling timbre of his voice, and one day he might step through the door with his cat-green eyes, his clever smile, and burgundy hair, and I wouldn’t even recognize him.

“You need to go to him,” Mama murmured, coming up to us as silently as a shadow. She eased onto the bench beside me, her fingers tracing small circles in my back.

“I can’t. I need to keep the two of you together. To keep our family together.”