The iron bolt grated into place, sealing the door against the rest of Berezan. Outside, soot-stained snow drifted past the iron grilles, blurring the copper domes of the outer bailey. Anasztasia stood near the unlit hearth, her grey wool mantle pooling around her boots. She was not shivering. The cold belonged to her, had always belonged to her, yet she rubbed her bare wrists where the manacles had left yellowing bruises. Sasha rested by the fender, front paws curled beneath a chest of rime-white fur. The vulpine’s glassy pupils caught the red smear of the evening sun slanting through the leaded panes. A low, reedy hum vibrated in the beast's throat—grief rendered as pitch. "The Empress expects you to swing the broadaxe," Zoryan said. His voice was hoarse, rough from shouting orders over the roar of leaking conduits during the morning's riot. He leaned his back against the timber door, hand resting on the brass wire wrapped around his scabbard. "She expects you to choose between your neck and your sister's." "She expects me to refuse," Anasztasia corrected softly. She didn't look at him. She stared down at the cold ashes in the grate. "Lyudmila rules by balance. If I execute Daria, House Volkov is wiped of its future, and the peerage sees that even devotion to kin bends beneath the crown. If I refuse, two traitors burn on one pyre. Her ledger stays clean either way." "You cannot butcher her." Zoryan pushed off the timber, boots thudding on the woven rush matting. The righteous sting that usually ruled his gut felt dulled, replaced by an ache behind his ribs. "And you will not kneel for the headsman. I did not drag that memory into the hall just to watch your blood drain into the gutters." "You exposed her because you believed the truth possessed teeth, Zoryan." She turned then. For weeks she had worn an expression carved from glacial granite, but tonight the facade was stripped to the bone. Her mouth trembled before settling into a flat line. "You thought if the court witnessed her malice, they would grant me absolution. But the court does not care about innocence. It cares about hygiene. Daria is an infection, and I am the hand that let it enter the blood." "I care." The words hung thick between them, stubborn and clumsy. Anasztasia stepped away from the hearth, closing the distance until the hem of her skirt brushed his leather greaves. Up close, the faint scent of dried mint and frost clung to her linen collar. Her gaze traced the fresh scorch marks on his gorget, then rose to meet his eyes. Her expression carried no subtle shift or deceit—only a stark, bottomless clarity. "You are a fool, Voronin," she murmured. Her fingers touched the bruised flesh above his cheekbone, cold as pond ice, yet the contact made him lean forward instead of pulling away. "A hot-headed, disgraced guardsman who fights windmills while the citadel collapses around him." "Then let it fall," he said, catching her wrist. He did not squeeze; his thumb merely rested against her pulse, which fluttered like a trapped swallow. "I have spent my life seeking restoration for a dead house. A plot of frozen dirt, a title no one respects. It meant everything until I watched you stand in that hall and take the venom intended for a girl who would gladly feed you to the hounds." "She is my sister." "She is a monster." "She is hollow," Anasztasia whispered. Her fingers curled into the wool of his tunic, gripping tightly enough that the cloth strained. "You think Daria was born with that blackened sorcery? You think a child of twelve devises spells that crack the deep bedrock?" Zoryan went rigid. "What did she do?" "Four winters ago, our father died without leaving a drop of power to either of us. The Volkov blood was thinning. The tax collectors were at the gates, and the Grand Duke whispered in her ear. Kresimir brought her a reliquary from the Old Northern Barrens. A shard of the Chthonic Core." A foul pit opened in Zoryan's stomach. "The ancient pacts are forbidden on pain of scourging." "She swallowed the seed willingly," Anasztasia said, her voice dropping so low he had to bend his head to catch it. "It gave her the raw puissance of the deep rifts. But the bargain is alive. It feeds on marrow. Every spell she casts hollows out what she used to be. The girl who cried over crushed sparrows is gone, Zoryan. There is only the entity wearing her skin, hungry for more conduit power, pushed forward by Kresimir's promises of an empress's coronet." She looked down at his chest, her forehead coming to rest against his breastplate with a hollow clink against the steel. "If I don't kill her tomorrow, the hunger will split her open before the thaw, and Berezan will drown in black fire anyway. And if I do... I break the vow I swore to my mother's ghost." Zoryan dropped his sword belt to the floor. The iron buckle struck the floorboards with a dull crash. He brought both arms around her, pulling her close, ignoring the bite of her cold aura against his neck. For a moment, she stiffened against his throat, guarded by years of solitary survival, before she yielded entirely, burying her face into the crook of his shoulder. "I am not letting you die tomorrow," he said into her dark hair. "Do not make vows you cannot pay for with steel," she breathed against his skin. "Just... stay. Until the bells toll the third watch. Give me this one night where I am not the witch of the eastern bastions. Where I am only Anasztasia." His response was to tighten his grip, his cheek pressed against her temple. Outside, the last sliver of amber sunlight bled out behind the spires, plunging the room into the twilight of Midwinter Eve. Sasha moved silently, resting his chin over Zoryan’s boot, eyes reflecting the dim room. A sharp, erratic tapping sounded against the lower pane of the courtyard casement. Zoryan reached for his dagger instantly, stepping between Anasztasia and the glass. The frost on the outside of the pane was being scraped away by a bone-handled stylus. A face appeared in the cleared oval—sallow skin, ink-stained spectacles perched crookedly on a hooked nose. Master Feodor, the keeper of records. Zoryan unlatched the casement, pulling it inward as a gale of frigid air rushed through the opening. The old man scrambled over the sill, coughing violently into an ink-mottled handkerchief. In his arms, wrapped in oiled tarp, he clutched a heavy, brass-bound folio covered in dried mud. "Guard the door, boy! Guard the door!" the scholar wheezed, his knuckles raw and red. "Kresimir’s hounds are checking every desk in the scriptorium. They found the empty shelf." Anasztasia pulled her mantle tight, the vulnerable woman vanishing instantly behind the severe poise of the mage. "What shelf?" "The pre-imperial annexations. The records of the Northern Covenants." The archivist dropped the heavy book onto the wooden side table, the impact scattering loose quill shavings. He flipped past yellowed folios of cattle tallies and grain yields until he slammed a palm onto a page dense with angular, archaic runes. "The girl’s contract. I found the counterpart registry." Zoryan leaned over the table, staring at the spidery glyphs. "Can the tether be severed? Can she be cut off from the deep ley lines before dawn?" "Yes," the old man gasped, wiping sweat from his brow despite the biting draft. "The binding to the Chthonic Core is rooted in lineage. The anchor isn't in her mind; it is tethered to the Volkov bloodline itself. If you sever the connection at the source, the power drains away into the earth, harmless. She becomes ordinary. Frail. A criminal without her fangs, unable to resist the Empress's magistrates." Anasztasia drew a sharp, sudden breath. "How do we break it?" Feodor looked up, his watery eyes darting between the two of them, the ink stains on his fingers trembling. "The rite demands an inversion of the blood debt. The entity gave power for life. To break the bargain, the family must pay with blood from the same root." He tapped the brittle parchment, pointing to a dark diagram depicting a heart pierced by a thorned rod. "It cannot be Daria’s blood; the entity protects its host," the clerk said, his voice dropping to a harsh rattle. "Another of the bloodline must perform the severing from within the circle. But the pact requires full balance. The one who breaks it will take the full backlash of the severed void into their own veins."

The Last Sunset