Page 120 of Katya and the Young God

Katya exhales, and, feet shaking, plants herself in the middle of the room. Not letting herself move, not letting herself dash away, though her heart thuds and her hands tremble and her stomach boils.

Selene’s lips part, and a small, childish noise comes out. “Katya, please don’t run.”

Katya tries to speak, tries to, but finds she can’t propel the words from her mouth. They die, shriveled up, before she can force them out.

“Oh right, your lungs are bloody,” Selene says, cocking her head. “You’re hurt.”

And Katya’s not feeling hurt, no angry stab of pain, but when she looks down, a bloody maw sits where her chest used to be, and the terror claws its way back up again.

Selene jumps down from the lip of the coffin, just like she would jump down from the swing on the porch, and takes a few tentative steps towards Katya.

“Please don’t go?” Her voice, the child’s voice with thousands underneath it, lilts up at the end. “I don’t want you to go, I like you.”

So Katya digs in, doesn’t let herself run away, though sweat pools down her back, trickling down her legs.

Her shoulder doesn’t even hurt her here.

“I don’t know what’s outside the room,” Selene says, taking another step forward, and it seems like the rot strips away with each step, making her look more like a child, a child with messy hair and large brown eyes and a serious look on her face. “I know I can’t bring you back from there.”

Just like how she brought back Stepan, again and again.

“I can bring you back, get you back home.” The closer she gets, the more her voice just sounds like...her. Like the child who plays in Katya’s front yard and chases after the snow. “You just can’t run away.”

She stops, halfway to Katya, and there’s still bloody mist pouring around their feet and skulls with crystals for eyes and the fucking entire room is a nervous system.

“Will this be there?” Katya manages out, pointing to the gaping hole in her chest, where her breastbone and lungs and stomach should be.

Her voice is a bare whisper, almost inaudible.

Selene tilts her head again, but this time it’s calculation. It’s calculation like how she asks for hot chocolate from Pieter but books from Katya. “I can make it go away.” Katya gets the distinct feeling she’s being bribed. “Your foot is...the bone is broken too long? But this is new?” Her eyes, both now whole, snap up to Katya. “Katya, Pieter’s begging.”

Pieter.

Who called in his brother for her. The brother who killed his dream, whose wife killed Pieter’s twin, who harmed his life irreparably. The brother who tore his power away from him.

Pieter, who didn’t kill her when he really had the chance, before they formed any emotional bond. Pieter, who’s driving want for so long was to just protect his dog. Pieter, who made her soup and who carried Selene out of this hole in hell and into the world. Pieter, who fucking got stabbed and still went in to save a child.

Pieter, who wrote runes on her arms to protect her, and held her when she cried. Who let her sleep on his shoulder when she couldn’t be awake anymore under the mountain. Who kissed her in the snow.

Katya’s eyes stray to the exit of the room, to the black beyond, before taking a step towards Selene.

In a flash, Selene’s face is rotted out again, before back to the whole face of a child, and the terror rises in her throat, grasping and clawing at her jaw.

But Pieter is waiting.

Selene holds out a hand, and its skeletal, skin peeling off to reveal the stark bone beneath.

And every instinct of Katya’s is telling her to bolt, her own feet shake with the effort of not running away, of not dashing to that door and beyond, and —

Before she can stop herself anymore, she brings her hand down and grasps Selene’s.

* * *

Katya convulses,terror clawing into a scream, and she’s drenched in blood, there's so much blood and it coats her shirt and sticks to her skin and —

She jerks, and above her is the bright white light of the fluorescents and the gray tile ceiling.

Blood floods into her mouth and she retches, coughing, spraying it all over herself, and and and —

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