⧗ CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE ⧗
Dmitri scrambled back as Ksenia stalked closer, head swimming with pain and confusion. "K-Ksenia, what are you doing —?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?" She snarled. Gone was the mirth and joy he'd seen in Ksenia's face only an hour before. Gone was the sweet girl he'd slept with the night before. All that was left was fury and venom, spitting from her teeth as she continued, "I want you fucking dead! God, you're even stupider than I thought!"
With that, she lunged, bringing that rock down again. Dmitri gasped and rolled away, but he couldn't get back to his feet before Ksenia had delivered a swift kick to his stomach, followed by another blow from that rock, coming down on his right shoulder. His bad shoulder. Pain exploded down his back and arm, and Dmitri went down again in a cry.
There was no time to register the sick betrayal that clenched his gut. Dmitri didn't understand what was going on — only that Ksenia wasn't stopping. Even trapped in fervent denial, Dmitri couldn't avoid the truth.
She's going to kill me.
The same girl who saved his life in the chemistry lab. The same girl who dared to kiss him in the laundry, who kept him fed and warm throughout these past few days in the unforgiving wilderness.
The same girl who had picked up a rock and was now bringing it down upon his skull. Dmitri managed to cover his head with his arms before Ksenia could attempt caving in his skull again. The rock, bigger than his fist, cracked against his knuckles. But this time Dmitri managed to grab Ksenia's arm and wrench it out of her grip.
The rock went skittering away, tumbling over the side of the cliff.
"Bastard!" Ksenia spat, hands now free to grab him by his coat and slam Dmitri into the rock wall behind him. His head cracked against icy granite, and she threw him to the ground. "You never belonged here! The Red Room was never meant for you!"
But Dmitri's mind was still reeling. Even as pain drummed behind his eyes, only a single word escaped him. "Why?!"
She stomped on his hand as Dmitri reached out a hand to grab something, anything. He heard the sickening crunch as she broke two of his fingers beneath her heel. "Because I hate you!"
Another kick, this time catching Dmitri on the chin.
"I always hated you! Hated you, hated your wretched Mia! Hated what you brought to this school! Each time you left I hoped you'd never come back!"
Dmitri blacked out for a moment, and when he next came to, he tasted blood in his mouth. His head felt like molten lead, heavy and awkward on his shoulders. Every movement hurt, but Ksenia wasn't immediately laying into him. He looked around, terrified, breathless, and saw her kneeling a few feet away, rummaging from her backpack and pulling something free.
The bow.
She hadn't yet turned back around. Dmitri was already trying to scramble back to his feet, but the multiple blows to his skull had already rendered him so slow, so discombobulated that even right side up Dmitri felt dizzy with vertigo.
Using the rock wall to support himself, Dmitri managed to get back to his feet just in time. Ksenia whirled on him.
He ducked as she swung the bow at his head. It was indeed too big for her to shoot at him with, but it worked perfectly fine as a blunt weapon in her hands. Dmitri didn't have a lot of places to go. Forward or backwards was his only escape; to the left was the rock wall, to the right, only a four meters of slippery rock before a sheer cliff drop.
"Why are you doing this? Why me?" Dmitri tried to stay back, ducking a few of her blows, but where else could he go? He couldn't get past Ksenia. And turning back wasn't an option. Just a narrow pathway, a bottleneck where she'd just chase him down and finish the job — further from the Red Room, further from help.
"Because you're weak!" She hissed, as the bow glanced off his arm. Dmitri finally had to deliver a fist to her side, but Ksenia was so furious she didn't react at all. Didn't appear to feel it. "All boys are. You were never supposed to get this far!"
"So what you promised at the graduation ceremony —" Dmitri's head still reeled with those words. That promise that they would be the last two standing. Why? Why let him think that? Why even bother?
"You think I was going to let you graduate?" Ksenia laughed, but there was no humor in it this time. Dmitri managed a glancing blow across her chin, but she twisted just so, and he nearly stumbled with the lost momentum. "Did you think I was going to suffer your presence for the rest of my life!"
"But all the things you said —"
"I lied!" Ksenia yelled, as if at a child. "That's what we do! And if you had actually been good, Dmitri, then you would've seen it! But I knew, I knew that if I could seduce you, then it'd prove me right. The Madame would see just how worthless you are. And I. Was. Right!"
She punctuated each of these last words with a volley of blows, bashing him once, twice, three times with the length of the bow — before Dmitri grabbed it and tried to wrestle it from her grasp.
This wasn't like any of their spars. Even as vicious as Ksenia was then, that was nothing compared to her now — not just vicious and unrelenting, but entirely lacking in the refined skills and maneuvers they were taught. Dmitri had imagined the combat he'd engage in to be masterful, a battle of skills.
But this wasn't like that at all. This was hissing, biting, scratching — like wild animals tearing at each other, no cool detachment. Only visceral, unadulterated primal instinct.
"So everything!" Dmitri said, as they skidded back and forth, the bow bending in their grips as they vied for power. "All of that, it was fake!"
"Textbook seduction!" She goaded him. "Draw in your target with what he wants. A kind word here or there. Let him think you're vulnerable so he exposes all of his weaknesses, and opens up to you. And then, when he least expects it, strike!"
She let go one side to slap him backhanded across the face. Dmitri's head snapped to the side but he managed to hang on, cheek stinging. He almost had her grip free, but Ksenia was tenacious, hanging on like a wild animal. "You had plenty of chances to kill me! Why now?"
"Because, idiot, if you paid attention in class," She snarled. "You'd know to always make it look like an accident. And most important of all — Leave no witnesses!"
She tried twisting the bow to wrench his grip, and Dmitri almost fell with it. Instead, he pushed forward, and Ksenia gasped as her heels slipped on ice.
But she caught herself at the last second and shoved back. Using Dmitri's momentum pulling the bow to launch herself on top of his shoulders. He didn't even see when she had unstrung the bow — only that the cord was now being wrapped around his throat.
Dmitri gasped, but then he couldn't breathe at all. Ksenia's weight on his shoulders knocked him off balance and they both tumbled to the ground.
But Ksenia's vice grip on her improved garrote didn't let up.
"They all saw it," She sneered at him, as Dmitri choked for air. Her face in shadow, inches from his, blue eyes blazing. "Our beloved sisters. They all saw what I was doing and they said nothing. And you want to know why? Because they know it too. You're weak, Dmitri."
"You're — wrong!" Dmitri could barely get the words out. But he refused, he refused to let Ksenia have this last victory over him. The others wouldn't have let her get away with this. Not when they knew it was so wrong.
"Am I?" She grinned. "Maybe. But you'll never live long enough to find out. Now be a good boy and die already."
Her knee pressed down on his chest, squeezing even more air out of his lungs. Dmitri gasped and writhed, fingers turning bloody as he pulled helplessly as the cord cutting into his neck.
His head felt light. Thunder pounded in his ears. Darkness crept into the edge of his vision.
Something hard pressing into his side.
Dmitri barely remembered it.
The knife.
"Fight all you want," Ksenia panted as he let go one hand to try and push her off, but his strength was already fading. "But we both know how this ends. I was always better than you. Smarter, faster, deadlier. But you weren't hopeless, Dmitri. The only thing you were good for was a nice fuck."
She smiled self-indulgently. "You should've stuck with that."
Only a second later did her eyes flick down and caught the flash of steel.
Ksenia pulled back instinctively, but the blade wasn't meant for her. It only pulled the cord tighter, so when Dmitri's knife cut through it — the cord snapped hard.
One end lashed Dmitri across the face. The other came away in Ksenia's hands, sending her rocking backwards off him.
She rolled back onto her feet, unbalanced.
Dmitri, still on his back, coughing as oxygen rushed back into his head, nearly blacked out again. But he held on just long enough to raise both feet and slam them into her chest.
Ksenia fell backwards. Of him, off the ground.
Off the cliff.
She screamed. For a split second, all they saw was each other. For a moment, there was no anger or hatred in Ksenia's face.
Only sheer terror.
And then she was gone.
Just dropped out of sight. He heard her scream grow farther and farther — thinner, quieter.
And then it stopped.
A distant crunch echoed off the cliff walls.
Dmitri stared at the empty space where Ksenia had been only moments before. Heart racing, lungs burning, body broken and bleeding in multiple locations. Gasping for air, it finally hit him what he'd done.
Panic finally reached his brain with the new wave of oxygen, and he scrambled forward on his hands and knees towards the cliff edge. No, no, that wasn't it, it couldn't have been that far up —
But as he looked down, Dmitri was almost immediately sick with vertigo. And that was before he saw, a hundred feet down, Ksenia's body lying broken upon the white ground.
A bloom of crimson opening around her body, like a vicious flower.
She didn't move.
A strange sound cracked across the mountain. At first, Dmitri didn't know what it was. Then, he pulled back from the cliff edge, rolling onto his back, he realized what it was.
Sobbing. Wretched tears as they were wracked from his aching body. But that pain was nothing to what Ksenia had done to his heart.
To what he had to do, just to survive.