“You aren’t planning on leaving, are you?” Mikhail asked. “Not after you were just injured.”

“I need to find my sister,” I said, clenching my hands into fists. “I can’t just sit here, wondering what’s happening to her. You don’t understand. If I don’t find her, it’ll...it’ll be like I’m losing my family all over again.”

“Toma, those men were soldiers.” His voice was strained. “Koschei’s men, I’m certain of it. If they see you again, they won’t just knock you out. They’ll kill you.”

“I’ll be ready for them this time,” I insisted. “I’m good at hunting, Mikhail. Better than you think. I know how to follow tracks. I’ll find them.”

He looked back at the table. “You really intend to leave?”

I nodded. “Where do you think they would have taken my sister?”

“Probably to Koschei.” Mikhail hesitated. “As a way of appeasing him for letting me escape. You need to know, Koschei is obsessed with supernatural creatures. Positively fixated on them. Especially the ones that people turn into after they’re dead—mavki, rusalki, drekavcy, upyri. He believes that they’re the key to deathlessness. He’s even tried...”

I swallowed. “Tried what?”

“It’s not important.”

“Tell me!” I demanded, dismayed by the fearful waver in my voice. “What has he tried?”

“Grinding up the remains of dead monsters,” he mumbled, scarcely louder than a whisper. “To see if he can make the Water of Life that the Three Sisters used to create the first men.”

My stomach twisted and I gagged involuntarily, sickened by the images that passed through my head. What kind of torture would Koschei subject Galina to in his quest to find an elixir of eternal life? She was just a little girl, just a child. Wouldn’t he be able to see that?

“But those upyri were already gone, just piles of body parts, too far past saving,” Mikhail added hastily. “Upyri are rare to encounter in the wild, and children who come back, even more so. But an upyr who is resurrected aware, who can actually still talk and think? It’s unheard of. If he finds one, he isn’t going to waste it.”

I struggled to speak. “My sister—she isn’t an it.”

Mikhail winced. “I know, I didn’t mean that. What I’m trying to say is the soldiers who took her know her value, know how important it is for Koschei to possess a sentient upyr. They’re going to do everything in their power to bring her to him unharmed, because that’s the only way they’ll survive. By showing him that they are still of value.”

“I’ll die before I let Koschei have her!” I took a deep breath, steadying myself. “Tell me where I can find him.”

“I can’t say for sure. Just before I escaped, he decided that it was too unsafe to stay in the capital, and he wanted to take me somewhere secluded. He was going to travel in the royal airship. I managed to escape when we arrived at the airfield. He never told me where he planned to go.”