face. They mirrored his gesture, touch like brittle air, bright with pine and glaciers.
With a crack like a rifle shot, a fissure cleaved the frozen road.
Gerrit strained for a glimpse of fresh snow through the tear, and the fissure widened like unsafe ice. Screaming, Gerrit drove all his focus into that weakness.
The world burst—the dirt road and motorcar and resistance fighters shattered. Icy wind pulverized the shards and powdered them into snow.
Blinded by noonday sun, Gerrit gasped for breath as though he’d been drowning. He stumbled forward, boots crunching in fresh snow, treeless peaks jutting into the sky beyond a deep valley. Icy wind tore tears from his eyes, and he’d never known anything so beautiful.
“Gerrit, you have to come back.” A voice whispered in the wind. A figure—the same figure—stood half a pace back, arms still outstretched as though to touch Gerrit’s face. “It’s spring. You’re in a field fresh with new growth, though it’s churned into mud from the storm. Rain’s sheeting into us, drumming your cap. Did you see the lightning? Hear the crack of thunder?”
Gerrit struggled to understand even as part of him rebelled, desperate to stay in this perfect alpine clearing. But he recognized Filip’s voice now and heeded him automatically, seeking the sensations his strazh described.
As Gerrit clawed into that muddy field, Filip’s heat mirage solidified, his cap shadowing dark eyes, rain soaking his battledress uniform. True-life bled through Gerrit’s sun-bright sousednia until the sky roiled with storm clouds, lightning flickering their depths.
Disoriented, Gerrit looked around. Tesarik and Iveta stood a dozen meters away, Captain Vrana, Branislav, Hana, Jolana, and Darina beside them, mud staining their knee-high boots.
“I imbued?” The words felt gritty on Gerrit’s tongue, distorted as though cotton stuffed his ears. The imbuement should ripple crimson, visible in true-life to anyone with storm blood.
He found his knife, fallen point-first in a muddy furrow. But it didn’t glow.
Gerrit frowned, not understanding. He’d imbued. The crimson fires of crystalized nuzhda should pulse over the knife in true-life just as they did in sousednia. He shifted his attention to his alpine clearing, but couldn’t even find the knife there.
Understanding landed like a kick to the gut. The knife didn’t glow because his imbuement had failed. He’d failed.
There had to be some mistake. He must have missed something. That wasn’t his knife. It couldn’t be.
Desperate, he met Filip’s gaze. “What happened?”
Filip’s intense concentration collapsed, and he pulled Gerrit into a rough embrace. “You came back,” he whispered, the words choked.
Only then did fear twist Gerrit’s stomach. Locked in memory, he’d fired his revolver again and again, caught in a combat nuzhda fugue. He hadn’t known anything was wrong. Hadn’t been able to think outside his rage and desperation. How long had he stayed like that before Filip caught his attention?
For however long, he’d been storm-mad. If Filip hadn’t pulled him back, Gerrit might never have returned. Today was supposed to be his great triumph, instead—
“I assume he failed,” Tesarik said, strident over the rain. His disgust held a cruel, satisfied edge.
Gerrit wanted to scream at the Tayemstvoy colonel, wanted to plunge into sousednia and try again.
Filip released him, but Captain Vrana caught his shoulder, warning in her grim expression. “You’re done for the day, Kladivo. Cadet Ruzhishka,” she called to Hana, “you’re next.”
CHAPTER FIVE
GRANDFATHER READ THE resistance leaflet while Celka watched Ela and Demian warm up on the practice wire. She did her best to pretend like everything was normal, but couldn’t match Aunt Benedikta and Uncle Andrik’s nonchalance.
“He’s turning peoples’ faith in the Storm Gods against the State,” Grandfather said. “It’s a dangerous game.”
“Does he know about me?” Celka asked.
Grandfather placed his gnarled hand on her shoulder. “Some secrets are too dangerous to voice.”
Celka kicked at the weeds, frustrated but traitorously relieved. Her family had built her entire life around hiding her identity. Out loud, she called Uncle Andrik ‘Pa’ and Aunt Benedikta ‘Ma.’ To the rest of the world, Ela and Demian were her sister and brother. Only that fiction had saved her when the Tayemstvoy arrested Pa.
“Silence won’t protect me forever.” She turned so the tumblers who’d sauntered over couldn’t read her lips. “You read the Wolf’s words. He needs me.”
“Your family needs you more.”
In sousednia, Celka drew a deep breath, trying to understand the tightness in his voice. But he just smelled like Grandfather—boiled cabbage and sweat from a good workout on the wire. Frustrated, she said, “The bozhskyeh storms have returned. You can’t deny that anymore. I need to learn how