Page 130 of 10 Days to Surrender

That is what I’ve done.

I know the price of what I’ve done is measured in blood. Perhaps I’m no better than them now. But I couldn’t watch another generation of Makris women be sacrificed on the altar of men’s ambitions.

The only thing that gave me pause was you, my darling. I know you think you love him. I’ve watched you twist yourself into knots trying to reconcile the monster with the man. But some stains don’t come out, no matter how hard you scrub. When I saw you glowing at that altar tonight, I knew I had to make my choice.

Either I burn this whole fucking world down, or I let him poison you, too.

I couldn’t do that. I made a promise the day you were born. This is what that promise looks like.

So forgive me. Or don’t. But above all, I beg of you this: don’t let him spin this into another pretty lie. The man you married didn’t change. He simply learned to hide his knife better.

Your uncle,

Kosti

I look up. Sasha stands a dozen yards away from me, looking back.

He took off his jacket while we were dancing. Now, the first raindrops of a storm that snuck over the horizon splatter against his shoulders. Every single one leaves its mark.

“Not again,” I whisper. “Not again.”

The letter slips from my fingers. It touches the dirt at my feet. As it does, something rips through me. Lightning, but not lightning in the sky. This is lightning fromwithin.

With it comes a fear. I wish I had a word, but it’s unlike any fear I’ve ever felt before. Even if I did know how to describe it, the pain it brings muzzles me. All I can do is let out an inhuman wail as the lightning forks and branches and burns parts of me that only my babies’ dancing feet have ever touched.

I crash to my hands and knees. It’s as if decades pass as I crouch there, on all fours like an animal, screaming wordlessly. I’m being burned alive, squeezed by a cruel god’s giant fist.

Finally, slowly, it relents. I can feel it preparing to strike again, though. Like it’s merely inhaling between efforts.

I look up again at Sasha. He’s blurred and refracted by my tears. Torn between coming to my rescue and knowing that he’s the last person alive I ever want to touch me again.

Not again.

Not again.

“You… you knew,” I choke out. “You let him hurt her. You orchestrated it.”

His eyes frost over. “It wasn’t like that.”

Thunder rumbles over the horizon. As I watch, distant lightning—the real kind—breaks on top of the hills. They look like teeth chewing the sky. Jagged, broken, rotting teeth.

I hate this place. I hate this place so fucking much. I want out of here and away from him.

But as the next bolt of lightning in my womb cracks, I’m pinned on hands and knees to the earth.

I bite down my cheek so I don’t scream this time. But the skin doesn’t last long—when it gives way, I taste and feel the hot trickle of blood.

I spit the blood on the soil between my hands and look up again. The rain is thickening now, coming down harder. Soon, Sasha’s white shirt is drenched and ruined.

“You told me you saved her.Savedher, Sasha? Do you even know what that means? Are you even capable of doing something selfless?”

In the corner of my eye, I see Jasmine bend down next to me and pick up the letter. Her hand flies to her mouth as she reads. A horrified gasp stills on her lips, halfway between swallowed and screamed.

“I was wrong,” Sasha whispers. “I am not the man I was then.”

I bark out a laugh at that. “How can you not be? No, better question: how thefuckam I supposed to believe that? You’re just such a pretty liar, Sasha Ozerov. You make the world look however you want it to look. And I’m stupid enough to fall for it, every single time.”

I plant a hand on the chair I was in moments ago and use it to leverage myself up. Mama comes rushing to help me, but I wave her off. I want to do this alone.

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