Page 44 of Broken Embers

I stagger a step, gripping a tree trunk to steady myself.

“You okay?” Oleksi’s voice cuts through the silence like a blade.

I nod without looking at him. “Just… need a sec.”

He doesn’t press. He never does when I get like this. But I feel his gaze on me. Sharp. Protective. Still giving me space, even when I’m unraveling.

Syd jogs up to us from where she’s been scouting ahead, her hair pulled back into a neat bun, with the collar of her jacket pulled up high. “We’re ten clicks from the fallback ridge,” she tells Oleksi. “I recommend we pause in the next clearing. Let everyone hydrate. You look like shit,” she adds, glancing at me.

“Thanks,” I rasp. “You always know how to make a girl feel like a queen.”

“Let’s go for a walk,” Oleksi says.

The others peel off to give us space. Clyde and Ivan light a small fire, murmuring between themselves. Timofey’s men form a quiet perimeter.

He steers me away from his team, and we walk deeper into the forest, stopping near a patch of dry moss between the trees. “We can sit here.”

I sink onto the moss with a groan and drop my pack.

Oleksi lowers beside me.

“Talk to me,” he says, voice low, careful. “If you want to.”

I stare straight ahead.

“I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Try the middle.”

“Can we not?” I look at him and shrug. “I’m just not ready. I haven’t even had time to process it all myself yet.”

Flashes of the different facilities and Yelena run through my mind, followed by the picture of Mikhail’s lifeless body lying on the ground. I give myself a mental shake. Truthfully, if it were just the RMSAD or the picture of Mikhail’s lifeless body, I could probably push it to the back of my mind or process it a lot easier.

But it’s not the facilities, or Mikhail nearly raping me, or the image of him lying with dead eyes bloodied on the ground that starts a rising panic inside me when I think about it or am reminded of it—it what’s attached to all that that stirs up emotions that because I never dealt with them are still raw beneath the surface. The facility, Yelena, and the picture of Mikhail opened a door that allowed a much older image in, one that my subconscious had edited into the memory reel of Yelena, the facility, and Mikhail.

Now, when I see the bullet hit Mikhail in the head and drop to the ground in my mind, it’s quickly followed by a more terrifying one… One that has lingered like a dark shadow at the back of my mind for twelve years. One, I was never ready to deal with, and still .

How do I explain all that to anyone? Silence stretches between us. I close my eyes. Try to center myself. Breathe.

A hand touches my knee. Warm. Grounding. I open my eyes and find Oleksi watching me.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

I nod. Just once.

“I’m sorry. I know you must have a million questions about the RMSAD.” I take a deep breath. “But I’ve done nothing but talk to Russian weirdos for five days.” I grin as his brows rise. “I just don’t want to talk anymore. My brain and senses have been high alert…” I swallow. “I’m not sure how to explain it without sounding like…”

“You know you’re the smartest person in the room?” He offers with a slow smile.

“I was going to say like Yelena Zorin!” The name sends a spark of anger through me that I didn’t quite expect.

I try to shake it off, but she’s back in my head. Breaking apart my life to expose nothing but lies and to show me just how little I know about my family… about me! The picture of Mikhail and how fucking strong his was hits me once again.

I can hear the thud and crunch of a pipe hitting bone. I saw the gash in his head—the scariest part is his sneer about Valeska not hitting hard enough wasn’t true. She hadn’t hit hard enough to killhim.

If he had been anyone else, the blows she’d given him to the head would have killed them. All it did to him was knock him out. He didn’t just get up and stagger about either. He got up and commanded a security team, then came after us like he’d had nothing but a mild bump to the head. It took a bullet to his brain to kill him…

I swallow again and close my eyes. What the fuck kind of genetic enhancement was Mikhail given? And while it’s not bad enough that things like that actually happen, my mother was the one who created that treatment. And then that nagging thought that’s been eating away at me since I learned my beautiful, loving, caring sister, Tara, was given the same treatment. I can’t help but wonder…

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