Hours felt like days to Valya as she sat in the middle of her bed. No one in the team had gotten any sleep in the past few days and it was unlikely that she'd get any upcoming ones either. Thoughts fought for space in Valya's brain as she squeezed her eyes shut, desperately willing herself to sleep.
Jasper crouched by her and tapped her lightly on the shoulder. He said something but she couldn't hear him.
"Huh?" Valya spun around, dazed.
"It's your watch," he repeated. "You're on until three."
Valya nodded slowly and stood, grabbing her gun and her stake off of the table. "Right. Watch. I almost forgot about it."
Jasper looked at her and bit his lip. "Do you want me to sit with you?"
"No," She shook her head and brushed past him on her way to the stairs. "I'll be fine. If any Strigoi arrive, I'll sound the alarm."
"Valya," he called after her, his voice barely above a stage whisper as not to disturb the others sleeping in the basement. Valya ignored him.
Jasper glanced around him then followed her out onto the porch where she sat, weapons at the ready, as she peered into the darkness. He sat next to her on the porch, the moon shining brightly on the path that led into the woods.
"Are you okay?" he asked
Valya scoffed. "I hate that question."
"What?"
"I said, I hate that question," Valya repeated. She looked over her gun and cleaned off tiny specks of dust and dirt. "Of course I'm not okay. You don't need to point it out to me."
"That's not-" Jasper sighed. "We just want to help."
"Well, then you can stay out of my damn business," Valya retorted. "I get enough bullshit from Pollock, I don't need it from you."
Jasper rubbed his head, thinking. "It's our business too. She was our leader as much as she was yours."
"Did she give you life and an unfulfilled quest for revenge as well?" Valya said sarcastically. "Because if so, by all means: join me in my misery."
Jasper averted his eyes. "You need to keep a clear head out here, Valya. Or-"
"Or I'll end up like my mother?" Valya's tone was biting. "No thanks. I'm going to kill that bastard myself; slit it throat to navel, then mount the head above my mantle because in this scenario, I have a fireplace. Then I'll sip some expensive vodka and yippee-kay-yay out of here."
They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.
"Have you called Sasha?" Jasper asked.
"You know I can't do that," she said. "No personal calls on the mission phones."
"I think in this case, they'll make an exception," he said. "I know you two are close. Maybe talking to him will help."
Valya ran her hands through her hair. "Maybe. I bet he's devastated right now. She was like a mom to him too. He has no one, you know."
"Don't we all?" Jasper raised his eyebrows.
Valya shrugged.
"You two are pretty serious from what I've heard," Jasper said.
"What are you getting at, Mora?" She narrowed her eyes at him.
"Just that you always have someone to lean on when the going gets tough." Jasper patted her on the shoulder. "Remember that."
He stood, he boots surprisingly quiet on the uneven wood of Ekaterina's front stoop.
"Jasper?" Valya asked as he was halfway through the door.
"Yeah?" He paused.
"Can you make sure Pollock doesn't get at any of her stuff?" She cast her gaze downwards, where she was picking at the edges of her nails as a distraction. "He's going to take it for some Stasla shrine or whatever and I have other plans."
Jasper smiled. "Yeah, I can do that. Goodnight, Valya. Or should we call you Stasla now too?"
Valya scoffed. "I'm not worthy of that title." Then, quietly, "Not yet."
He nodded. "Valya it is, then. Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
The team continued their investigations in Rokin with a cloud of darkness hanging over them. People in Corinth had been lost before; they were no strangers to death, but this was different. It was like losing a messiah. Rose represented much more than simply a ruler to them, but the intangible concept of hope for the future. Hope that the world might be free of Strigoi sometime soon. Hope that they could live outside of their compound's walls.
It took Valya an entire week before she was strong enough to look through her mother's things and she did so with hands that shook so much she could barely hold the pen in her hand. Slowly, she began writing down what was in Rose's pack on a piece of paper that she could keep for inventory.
Comms unit, clothing (two Corinth-issue shirts, two Corinth-issue pairs of pants, and assorted civilian clothing), a Russian newspaper dated March 28th...
Valya smiled when she found a pack of Big Red gum. Her mother always had a propensity for cinnamon-flavored candy and anything spicy. She pocketed the gum and continued to rifle through the bag, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. She laid out the contents of the backpack on the hard concrete floor of the basement.
Rose Hathaway's life was in this backpack.
Valya pulled the pack of gum out and unwrapped one of the leftover pieces, sticking it in her mouth. The rush of sugary sweetness was exhilaratingly uncommon to Valya. Candy wasn't exactly a normal thing in her food rations to begin with.
The backpack puzzled Valya and she shook it out, but nothing other than dust fell to the floor. Rose had been hiding something before she'd died and Valya knew there would be some kind of evidence of it in her things, but she wasn't sure where. She wasn't stupid enough to hide it under her mattress like a teenage boy hiding issues of Playboy and she wouldn't have had it out in plain sight.
Valya reached for the knife in her boot and carefully cut the lining of Rose's backpack open. She'd worked her way around half of the backpack when she saw the corner of a cream-coloured piece of paper wedged towards the bottom. The breath went out of Valya's lungs.
This is what she'd been waiting for: a sign that Rose's death wasn't for nothing.
She sheathed the knife and pulled the paper out from the lining, holding it up to the light. It was an envelope folded in half, pieces of a dark green wax seal breaking off into Valya's hands as she unfolded it. She couldn't make out the crest, but there were flecks of gold in the wax. Dragomir colours. There wasn't any writing on the outside of the envelope.
Valya pulled out the letter, the same thick, cream-colored paper as the envelope. Everything felt fancy and elegant, but no one inside Corinth operated like that. Valya didn't want to entertain the thought that her mother still kept contacts outside of Corinth or, heaven forbid, inside Court without the knowledge of anyone else in Corinth. Her heart beat quickly as she read the letter.
Anna,
Rokin, Ural Mountains. Omarova will find you. Keep the package safe. Stay until April.
He still loves you.
I do too.
Valya turned the letter over frantically, trying to see who had sent it, but there wasn't a clue. The letter itself was printed on what seemed to be a typewriter, probably to evade leaving any digital footprint. The paper it was on had a faint emblem printed on the back. Valya held it up to the light to reveal the Dragomir crest.
Court.
Her heart hammered in her chest. Her mother was in deeper than she'd ever thought. Her father was at Court; her mother's past was there. How close had Rose become with her old contacts at Court? How did Valya know that they wouldn't find her? All her life, Rose had told her that Court would do terrible things to her if they'd found out who she really was.
Suddenly, Valya felt as if she couldn't breathe. She fell to her knees, the letter clutched in one hand and rasped against the cold, cracked concrete. A sharp pain ripped through her chest; she felt like she was having a heart attack. The door to the basement stairs opened and the rest of the team thundered down the stairs.
"Everyone stand back," Jasper said. He knelt by Valya. "She's having a panic attack."
"Pollock," Valya gasped. She threw the letter into the air and he caught it. "Explain."
Pollock read the crumpled letter with a crease in his forehead. The realization dawned on him that it was sent from Court and his blanched.
"It's-" He began.
"Explain," Valya said through gritted teeth as she attempted to regain her breath.
"It's from Court," Gin said in amazement. "Who's Anna?"
Valya had managed to regain some semblance of control of her breathing and rubbed her temples.
"It's a reference," Pollock said before Valya could answer. "Shadow-kissed Anna, St. Vladimir's dhampir guardian."
"Mom was shadow-kissed before she had me," Valya added. "Whoever sent this knew her back when she lived at Court."
"Someone inside Court was giving her intel on the mission." Gin took the letter from Pollock. "But that's impossible."
"What happened in Pennsylvania, Pollock?" Valya asked him. "You have to tell us now."
Pollock rubbed the shaved sides of his head and began pacing. "You don't understand, she would kill me."
"Just fucking say it!" Valya growled at him.
"Stasla was meeting someone," Pollock blurted out. "When she started sneaking off, I followed her. It was some guy in a guardian uniform that she'd meet in the woods a few miles outside of Court. I thought she was just meeting a new contact inside that we were going to add to our network, but I'm not sure anymore."
"Can you describe him?" Gin asked.
"Around Stasla's height, maybe an inch or two taller." Pollock seemed distressed. "I didn't get a good look at him. He had... blond hair? I think. Maybe brown. It was dark."
"Anyone you remember?" Gin asked Valya.
"I don't know anyone from Court," Valya said. "Mom never even kept pictures. All she'd tell me about was my father, who was apparently a beast, so it couldn't be him. There's also a woman named Lissa, but I highly doubt it was her."
Hershey knelt down with a concerned expression on her face and helped Valya to her feet. She brushed off Valya's jacket.
"Do you think...?" Hershey's voice trailed off.
"What?" Valya asked.
Hershey glanced around at the group, conflicted. "Do you think, maybe, that's there's a slight chance that the person from Court sent her here not so she could fight whatever's here, but for another reason?"
Rose always spoke of Court like she couldn't return for fear of repercussions for a long-committed crime. Someone there must have wanted to kill her.
"But it whoever sent it loves her," Gin said. "That makes no sense."
"Court hated her, though," Valya added. Anger clouded her thoughts. "They sent her here to die."
"Valya-" Pollock interjected.
"No! Hershey's right!" She was becoming worked up and shook Hershey's hand off of her shoulder. "We have to go and find who sent this!"
"Oh my," Hershey said quietly. "Valya-"
"Valya, you can't," Gin said. "You'd risk exposing us all if you went to Court."
"But what if her murderer is there?" Valya asked. "Do you not care about your precious Stasla enough to avenge her death?"
Valya began pacing around the confined space of the basement, her mind flicking through all of the different options. She kept coming back to one: kill who killed Rose. Her mother was everything to her, her entire world.
"Please, Valya," Gin placed a hand on her arm to stop her pacing. "Don't follow up on this. What's done is done. You can report it to Colonel Hollis when we return if it makes you feel any better."
Valya took in a shuddering breath and nodded, doing her best to conceal the cogs that were whirring in her mind. She wouldn't let Rose's death go without being acknowledged. If the rest of the team wanted to ignore it, so be it. She would do what she had to do on her own. "Fine."
Pollock looked at the letter one more time before handing it back to Valya. "I don't want to keep it."
"Really?" She took it from his hand. "You don't want to add it to your Stasla shrine?"
He shook his head. Valya noticed that it was the first time that Pollock ever looked truly sad. His face was drawn and his shoulders hunched. She felt unsettled.
"Did you love her?" Valya asked softly.
Pollock cracked a smile. "Didn't we all?"
Silence filled the room. Then, suddenly, Pollock snapped back to his normal self.
"Okay team, we have patrols set up for tonight," he said. "Specialist and Cadet Mora, I want you two to go over the data we've gained in the past few weeks. Belikova, you're on solo patrol before nightfall. I'll be joining you once the sun sets. Let's move out."
A flurry of activity replaced the uneasy feeling among the team members and normalcy began to set in once more. Valya felt the letter that was folded in the pocket of her trousers and began formulating a plan. She would take a page out of her father's book: good things come to those who wait.
It took another few weeks before April arrived in Rokin and the team packed up their equipment to go back to the Chelyabinsk airport. Valya shut the door to Ekaterina's house and felt an odd sensation as they left for their car.
It was like leaving home.
The events that had happened at that house and in Rokin made her feel almost like she had bonded with the village. The door latched shut and Ekaterina was there to lock the door with her necklace of keys.
"Bears?" Valya asked with a smile.
"Bears," Ekaterina said.
They loaded up the car quickly and Valya turned to Ekaterina to thank her, but the woman was already pulling her into a hug.
"Spasibo," Ekaterina said.
Valya was unsure of what to do, but hugged her back nonetheless.
"Spasibo," Valya said. They exchanged a significant look and as suddenly as it had happened, it was over.
It wasn't until they'd arrived in Newark Airport after fourteen hours, haggard and dreary from the unending travels, that Valya was able to put her plan into motion. She spotted one of the departure signs, pretending that she needed to figure out the gate for their Vancouver-bound flight.
Philadelphia. Gate C52.
Bingo.
"Want to go get some Starbucks?" Hershey asked.
Valya shook her head. "I'm going to go to the bathroom. Meet you at the gate?"
Hershey smiled and nodded, leaving in the opposite direction.
Valya took her bag and walked towards the bathrooms at the other end of the terminal, ducking in for long enough that the team had left the line of sight. Then, she started off towards gate C52 with the startling feeling that from now on, she would walk this journey alone.
Corinth would have to wait. Court was the new destination.
Valya stood on the highway that went from Philadelphia to Court, her thumb in the air. The strap on her bag was beginning to dig into her shoulder and she wished that she'd pestered her mother enough to allow her to learn how to drive a car. She didn't have any form of human identification to help her rent a car and she was a few years shy of being able to rent a car on her own anyway. So there she stood, her arm extended into traffic, as a truck slowed to a stop next to her.
The truck driver rolled down his window. He was middle-aged, with a slight smattering of stubble across his chin. "You need a ride?"
Valya beamed. "If you're driving."
The truck driver indicated with his head to get into the truck. Valya opened the passenger side door and observed him, deciding that from the beer gut and disheveled flannel shirt she could definitely take him in a fight. She buckled herself in.
"Where you headed?" He started the truck up again.
Valya looked out the window with a triumphant smile. "West, around thirty miles."
He raised an eyebrow. "Alright."
The truck eased back onto the highway and as the sun began to rise over the horizon, Valya was one step closer to her goal.
Valya was dropped off by the truck driver with a confused 'bye' and a package of twinkies for good luck. The woods surrounding the road to Court were dense, but she could make out the trail and kept to the treeline in case anyone was coming or going from the gate. Valya shifted the backpack and started walking with quiet determination.
Court didn't appear for another three hours. Despite her endurance, Valya was beginning to feel drained; she hadn't slept in a full day and the weight of her mission was getting to her. Valya regarded the tall fence that edged Court with a skeptical glance. She could climb it, but she risked being seen.
Valya retreated to the woods to get her bearings.
She put her bag next to her feet and patted the side pocket absentmindedly, feeling for the silver stake and the gun she knew was somewhere in the mix. It felt like a security blanket to her and refocused her mind on the mission. What mattered was getting inside Court and finding the queen: she would listen to Valya and find the traitor. Valya had heard from her mother that the queen was fair and just: a Dragomir. If there was anyone to trust within Corinth, it was her.
Valya pulled the letter out from her backpack and read it again, the words already seared in her memory from nights spent repeating them over and over again. She ran her thumb over the letters.
He still loves you.
She put the letter into her back pocket, wanting to keep it close, and put her stake into her jacket. It was better to leave her backpack here; she was going to stay at Court for any amount of time and if she was caught, she'd rather they not have a direct line back to Corinth. She covered the backpack with a pile of leaves.
Valya approached the fence with apprehension, but it didn't look too difficult to climb if she had a bit of help. She climbed a nearby tree and walked out onto one of the thicker branches. From there, it was just a short hop to the top of the wall. The barbed wire bit into the sides of her boots but she leapt off quickly, rolling on the ground to displace the impact.
Luckily enough, most of the guardians were gone because it was daylight. She brushed herself off and began walking towards the main Court buildings as if nothing was wrong.
Valya couldn't help but marvel at Court: it was something she'd heard being spoken of with such malice that she'd expected a prison, but this was beautiful. The buildings were made of old brick, with stately gabled roofs and little accents that made it feel like an oasis in the middle of the Pennsylvanian woods. Valya felt like she had stepped back in time.
The few people who were out walking ignored her, assuming she was someone's child or a novice. Valya found a few signs pointing towards the throne room and assumed that the queen would live somewhere nearby. Getting into the throne room was a bit trickier.
Valya pushed the door open with surprising ease and crossed the threshold, suspicious.
This is too easy, Valya thought, but she continued anyway. She might as well see as far as she could get.
Two guardians began walking behind her at a normal pace. Valya fought to keep herself from running. She needed to remain normal, as if this was something she did every day. She turned the corner and noticed that the guardians followed her.
Panic began to set in.
Valya saw the sign for the throne room at the end of the hallway and her heart leapt into her throat. She broke into a sprint and the guardians dashed after her. Valya's feet hit the ground at an exhilarating pace, her jacket flying behind her like a pair of wings.
Her mission was clear in her mind: talk to the queen.
I have to make it, Valya thought. She whipped her head around to look at her pursuers. Faster. Faster.
The guardians behind her were fast, but she was faster, and she closed the last few yards between her and the door with ease. She had nearly reached the throne room door when it opened and she tumbled directly into the arms of someone much larger than her. Valya struggled against him and looked up into the face of the exact person she'd never wanted to see in her entire life.
Dimitri Belikov.