The second devil raised his head and looked between them. “I could have warned you, brother,” he said, his voice dry and exhausted. “Against lying.”

In that moment two things happened.

The second devil suddenly disappeared, as though he’d never been there at all. The Bear was left gaping at his empty hand.

And Konstantin, rather than go out and join the palace guard in searching for Vasya, plunged back into the terem without a sound, his soul aflame with desperate purpose.

THE WILD-EYED DOMOVOI MET Vasya and Morozko just outside the treasure-room. Vasya said, “What is happening?”

“It is dark now; the Bear is going to let them in!” cried the domovoi, every hair standing on end. “The dvorovoi can’t hold the gates, and I don’t think I can keep the house.”

Another crack of thunder sounded. “My brother is done with subtleties,” said Morozko.

“Come on,” said Vasya.

They burst out of the palace, onto a landing, and looked down at a landscape transformed. It was raining, hard and steadily, lit by intermittent flashes of lightning. The dooryard was swimming in mud already, but in the center was a knot of men, strangely still.

Guards, Vasya saw, squinting through the rain. Olga’s guards, and Dmitrii’s, standing bewildered.

The knot of them broke apart. Vasya glimpsed Konstantin Nikonovich, his golden head rain-wet in the middle of the dooryard.

He was holding her sister Olga by the arm.

He had a knife to the princess’s throat.

His beautiful voice was shouting Vasya’s name.

The guards, Vasya could see, were torn between fear for the princess and bewildered submission to the holy madman. They stood still; if any remonstrated with Konstantin it was lost in the noise of falling water. If a guard moved nearer, Konstantin backed up, holding the knife right against Olga’s throat.

“Come out!” he roared. “Witch! Come out or I’ll kill her.”

Vasya’s first, overwhelming instinct was to sprint down to her sister, but she forced herself to pause and think. Would revealing herself win Olga any respite? Perhaps, if Olga disavowed her. Yet Vasya hesitated. The Bear was standing behind the priest. But Medved wasn’t really watching Konstantin. His gaze was turned out into the rain-soaked darkness. “Calling the dead,” said Morozko, his eyes on his brother. “You must get your sister out of the dooryard.”

That settled it. “Come with me,” she said, gathered her courage and stepped bareheaded out into the rain. The guards might not have recognized her in the stormy dusk: a girl who was supposed to be dead. But Konstantin’s eyes locked on her the instant she stepped into the dooryard and he fell utterly silent, watching her come toward him.

First one guard’s head turned, then another. She heard their voices: “Is that—?”

“No, it can’t be.”

“It is. The holy father knew.”

“A ghost?”

“A woman.”

“A witch.”

Now their drawn weapons were turning toward her. But she ignored them. The Bear, the priest, her sister—those were the only things she could see.