Page 26 of 10 Days to Surrender

Twilight finds me perched on an overturned crate, squinting at a tractor operator’s manual by the watery light filtering through filthy windows, just to take my mind off things. Unlike me, Jasmine has had no problem sleeping. I can hear her breathing soft and even in the shadowy corner overhead.

A wooden creak signals Sasha’s return. He’s shirtless and covered in a light sheen of sweat from whatever the hell he was doing out there. The sight of scars and scabs rippling across his torso makes my heart clench up—but I tell myself I’m not allowed to ask questions.

What’s the point? Would you sympathize with him? Do you feel as if the man you knew, the body that gave you these babies… Do you think that man is gone? Damaged? Broken beyond repair? Or worse—what ifyou’rethe only one who can repair him? Can you? Should you? Is it your job to save him?

Can you, Ariel?

Should you, Ariel?

I pretend to be consumed by the technical ins and outs of the T293’s instrument panel, as described in French. I can sense Sasha’s presence, though. He’s looking at me again. I really wish he wouldn’t.

“Quit looming,” I say without looking up. “You’re making the babies nervous.”

A derisive snort. “The babies? Or their mother?”

“Don’t start with me now.”

He sighs. Uncle Kosti unleashes a thundering snore from the upper level, then settles back into sleep-addled mumbling. “I didn’t intend for this to happen, you know. We came to protect Jasmine. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

I drop the manual to the ground as I whirl on him. “And yet now, she’s on the run once again, with bad men breathing down her neck. Your ‘protecting’ has a funny way of getting people in trouble, Sasha.”

He regards me from where he’s leaning against a support beam, arms folded across his chest. I wish I could resist looking him up and down, but I’ve failed at that since the moment we met. Even now, seething at him for what he’s done, what he’s brought to my doorstep, the momentary bubble of peace I’d almost convinced myself would last forever… Even now, I can’t help noticing how beautiful he is.

He’s taller than I remember. I think I shrunk him in my memory just so he’d be easier to ignore. If he was small, I could stick him in a mental drawer and never linger on him again. But in this reality, he’s huge, with dark curls matted down with sweat and a beard that’s grown thick enough to verge on wild. His nose has a crook in it that wasn’t there before, but the tormented smirk underneath is the same.

It’s the eyes that’ve changed most. There’s a sadness to their depths that I definitely would’ve noticed. A molten, churning sadness.

Actually, on second thought, maybe thatwasalways there. What I’m certain is new are the injuries. He’s a patchwork quilt of ugly stitch scars and fading bruises. His skin is mottled in half a dozen different colors—blue, purple, green, yellow, red, black. A bandage looped haphazardly around his abdomen, the one I saw when he threw the canteen at me earlier, is drenched into a nauseating copper.

“You’re a mess,” I whisper.

He laughs. “Inside and out.”

I reach out toward him. Stop myself. Reach out again. Sasha watches me the whole time, moving neither to help me nor to stop me. Eventually, I give in to the impulse.

The bandages peel away with a sickening tug. Underneath it, his wound is obscene—a jagged canyon carved through muscle, surrounded by bruises in every shade of rotten fruit. The stitches look like something from a taxidermy project. Even Frankenstein’s monster would call this shoddy work.

“Who did this?” I ask. “Feliks after one too many vodka shots?”

“Dragan’s parting gift.” His muscles jump under my touch.

God, the mere thought of the stories underlying those three little words makes me sick to my stomach. How did Dragan get close enough to do this? Sasha is so strong, so careful and capable—so what was he doing that gave Dragan the chance?

The implied answer is obvious.

You, Ariel.

He was protecting you.

I just told him that his protection has a funny way of getting people killed. Did he almost join that club?

I accidentally graze a fingertip too close to the reopened wound and he hisses.

“Sorry,” I mumble. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have— Just, sorry.”

He nods and touches a palm to it. It comes away smeared with blood. “It’s fine. I ripped it trying to keep your sister from stabbing me through the face, actually. She’d be pleased to know she did some damage after all.”

I snort. “She doesn’t hate you like I do, unfortunately.”

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