A violent shake to Anya's foot blasted her back to consciousness.
Prying her eyelids apart, she lifted her head slightly with a loud groan only to be assaulted by a searing dissonance of color - fragments of light filtered by the panes of a tall stained glass window.
She slapped a hand over her eyes with a wince and lay her head back down. Her entire body yelped in exhaustion after struggling through thigh-deep snow in the dark for more hours than she cared to remember. "Ugh, five more minutes, please."
Anya could tell without looking it was Dimitri and not Vladimir looming over her as she lay stretched out on the unforgiving wooden chairs that formed a pew. She could sense the way he bent the air around him, as if the dark aura that constantly surrounded him sucked in all the energy in the room like a black hole. As it was, the fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up whenever he was this close to her. But she didn't like to think about that.
"Not today, your highness," he said, his words gruff. She felt him swat at her shoe hanging over the edge of the chair at the end of the row before he told her, "I don't want to be here any longer than we have to. People ask too many questions in small towns."
Anya rolled over onto her back. Dimitri stood nearby, squinting at the window. The blues and greens and reds produced by the glass looked attached to his face, like some kind of colorful, angular pox.
Narrowing her eyes at his profile, Anya wondered why Dimitri was so anxious to leave the safety of the tiny chapel built from unfinished logs they'd stumbled upon in the wee hours of morning. "What's wrong with meeting people?" she asked with a wide yawn. "They could probably help us. It's not like we have anything to hide. Right?"
Dimitri didn't acknowledge her, but his look turned so stormy Anya decided not to pursue the topic and asked about Vladimir and Pooka's whereabouts instead.
"He went into the village to see about getting a map about a half hour ago," Dimitri begrudgingly told her as he sat down at the end of the makeshift pew directly in front of her. "Of course, he took the mutt."
Anya sighed, fatigue and the hard chill in the room making her bones ache. "We just got here, Dimitri...you couldn't have let me sleep until he got back?"
He glanced back over his shoulder with an evil smirk. "Where would be the fun in that?"
Anya sat up and swung her feet to the floor, her battle senses ignited by the prospect of antagonizing him. She wasn't over what he did to her on the train; it had taken little for him to rile her ever since. Aside from that, the fact that after all his gloating and posturing he had picked up the wrong suitcase was still too good to be true. She was going to stick it to him every chance she got.
"You know what, why didn't you go find a map? Last time I checked, all of this -" she made a sweeping gesture about the room "- was your fault. Besides, Vlad would've let me sleep after we almost died walking around in the wilderness -"
"Anya, for once in your life, shut up."
She was on her feet and in the aisle next to the window before she'd realized what happened.
"No," she said through clenched teeth, her body temperature rising dramatically. "And if you wanna make me, I would love to see you try."
Dimitri stood much more slowly and faced her, a strange combination of barely concealed contempt and amusement emphasizing the hard lines of his features.
"What's wrong?" she asked mockingly when he only scowled down at her. "Can't face the truth?"
"The truth of what?" His response was sharp, his smile bitter with no hint of humor. "Of how much I wish I would've left your ass in St. Petersburg?"
"Nope. That you don't have a clue what to do next and you're letting Vlad do all the legwork." Anya was beginning to feel slightly manic. As her mouth moved faster and faster and the pitch of her voice began to rise, her brain had less and less to do with her words.
"Can't you take responsibility for once? He gets a map and then what? What are we gonna do about money? How long do you honestly think 80 rubles is gonna last? We could die out here! I could die out here! I'll never get to Paris, I'll never know..."
Anya hadn't realized just how angry she was with the state they were in - and with whatever it was growing between herself and Dimitri she so desperately wanted to smother. She trusted no one, would depend on no one. Paris and the truth of her identity had always been her singular goal. There had never been any room in her life for weakness. Knowing so acutely that she needed Dimitri was already too much to bear. There was no way in hell she could allow herself to want him, too.
Dimitri stared at her in silence from beneath furrowed brows, his own rage rolling off him like sweat.
Anya could feel deep within herself that she was reaching some kind of breaking point. Her feelings were becoming more difficult to strangle with every passing moment.
She needed a fight. Luckily for her, Dimitri had more than earned the brunt of her wrath.
Before Anya could open her mouth again to speak, the rays of early morning shifted outside the window, causing a spear of blood red light to fall right across Dimitri's lips.
He licked them briefly and all the fight drained out of Anya in an instant.
She swallowed, hard. Struggled to remember that Dimitri was the most reckless, infuriating, most uncomprehensibly selfish human being she'd ever known.
But she became aware that she'd moved closer to him during her tirade and now stood mere inches from his face. From very full lips, she had to admit, that were the most perfectly formed she had ever seen.
That now-familar hot rush returned, transforming her anger into something else entirely as his dark eyes bore into hers.
Anya could hardly function for the hot chills assaulting her body, thinking of the night before when their fingertips brushed as he handed her his gloves. She'd felt something, a spark, gone so quickly she'd wondered if she'd imagined it. Now standing close enough to her adversary to feel the heat from his body seep into hers, she didn't have to wonder any more.
Dimitri's voice was low and dangerous when he spoke again.
"Maybe I should've let Vlad babysit you after all."
Anya couldn't look away from his mouth. "You think he could handle me better?" she almost croaked.
He chuckled. Anya watched his Adam's apple bob. "No...but if I wanted to 'handle' you, you'd be handled already."
The challenge she heard in his voice hit like a bolt of lightning right between her thighs.
Chest heaving, Anya realized she was in very dangerous territory. She knew she should do something to break this hold he seemed to have on her, to turn her back and walk away.
Chewing her bottom lip, she glanced up again and caught his gaze, disgusted by her inability to turn away.
She'd warned Dimitri when they met against him putting his hands on her, but in this moment, Anya found she never wanted anyone to touch her so badly in her entire life.
"Like I said," she heard herself whisper, "I'd like to see you try -"
Vladimir's voice booming across the room finally broke the spell.
"I see you are getting along this morning," he said brightly, sidestepping toward them down Dimitri's pew row with a long roll of paper under one arm and a wriggling Pooka under the other.
Ducking her head to hide the blush staining her cheeks, Anya practically stumbled back to her own pew, feeling as if she'd just been defeated in battle.
Dimitri remained where he was and crossed his arms over his chest. "Something like that," he told Vladimir, and Anya could feel his eyes on her.
Vladimir grunted his approval and announced, "I have a map. There is a pub in the village. We should get food and discuss how to proceed."
"Well, let's go." Dimitri grabbed Vladimir's suitcase and headed for the door. Anya avoided eye contact with him as she eased Pooka from Vladimir's arms and followed them outside.
A light snowfall began as they walked into a rough village carved out of a patch of forest east of the train tracks, composed of perhaps fifteen families and built around what looked to be a hunting camp for wild game. Aside from the chapel, it was just large enough for a communal meat processing area near the tree line and the tiny centralized pub. Foot traffic on the main dirt path into the community's center was sparce due to the early hour, and the few weathered men and women Anya saw emerge from any of the thatch-roofed houses eyed the three of them with obvious mistrust.
The bald man behind the bar seemed to be the most congenial fellow around, nodding grimly as they stepped inside the dark room and made for the least rickety table near the fire.
A boy wearing an apron stained with old blood emerged from somewhere behind them and placed a meal presumably prearranged by Vladimir in front of each of them - liver, potatoes and boiled vegetables for the men, a bowl of hot broth for Anya - before slinking away again without a word. Stomach growling, Anya eyed Dimitri's and Vladimir's steaming plates with unconcealed envy as they began to eat, Dimitri with a distinct masculine grace Anya had never noticed before. When neither of them seemed to notice her pining for their meat and they began to converse quietly about their plans, she resigned to pick up her spoon and taste her thin soup.
She was mid-slurp when she felt Dimitri watching her again.
Anya resisted the temptation to meet his eyes but made a conscious effort to sit up straighter, sipping from her spoon without a sound the way she'd learned during their lesson on the train. All the while she pretended the sweat trickling down between her shoulder blades was caused by the fireplace at her back and not Dimitri's hot stare.
"According to the gentleman who owns the pub," Vladimir began in a low voice after their plates had been set aside and Dimitri had rolled the map out flat on the table, "we are approximately 25 kilometers from Ludza, here." Vladimir placed a finger on the site of the small town, so small it nearly disappeared into a crease in the stained paper.
Dimitri considered the map, tapping thoughtfully on his chin before he looked up at Vladimir with skepticism. "And how are we getting to Ludza exactly?"
Vladimir didn't blink. "We walk."
Dimitri cursed.
Anya looked back and forth between them, thinking of the holes she had already worn into her boots. "So we're walking to Paris?"
Dimitri looked as if he was suprised to discover her still sitting there, she'd been quiet for so long. "No, Your Grace...we're taking a boat in Germany."
"So we're walking to Germany, then?"
"There is a bus we will take," Vladimir explained as he traced the path on the map, "once we arrive in Ludza. It will take us through Poland to the German border. From there, we go to the port in Stralsund. That boat will eventually arrive in Le Havre, France."
Frowning at Vladimir's curiously spot-on pronunciation of the French town, Anya put her questions aside when she noticed Dimitri and Vladimir had already shut her out of their conversation again.
Her nerves were already stretched to the breaking point. Dimitri suddenly pretending she didn't exist while she sat embroiled in an internal battle was about to push her over the brink.
"Excuse me - " she started to interrupt tersely, but when Dimitri pushed his plate and its chunk of liver towards her on the table, the words died on her lips. He only raised his eyebrows at her before resuming his hushed discussion with Vladimir without breaking a stride.
Anya stared.
He knew she was starving, despite how hard she'd tried to hide it. There hadn't been much meat to begin with; she knew he could have polished it off with no problem and still have been hungry himself. But he had saved it.
For her.
Her heartbeat picked up for no reason at all.
Anya finished his plate with trembling hands and manners fit for the table of the czar himself. Then she jumped up out of her seat and told the men they could meet her outside when they were ready.
The sooner they got to Paris and Dimitri was out of her life - and her head - the better.