Page 89 of The Fire Beneath the Frost

I forgot I was lying to everyone I loved.

I forgot that love could get you killed.

All I knew was this: the music was loud, Petyr was near, and I didn’t feel like a prisoner.

* * *

We’d danced ourselves raw.

My shirt was soaked through, plastered to my back like a second skin, and my boots felt like they’d fused with the soles of my feet.Petyr’s eyes gleamed under the club lights, that same wild, reckless light I’d seen the night we first kissed.His chest heaved with laughter and exertion, and his hair was damp, curling against his temples.We were both grinning like fools.

He grabbed my shoulder, leaned in close.“Let’s get out of here.”

I didn’t ask where.I didn’t need to.The places we went were never written down.They lived in shadows and back alleys, in overgrown corners of the city where no one looked too closely.There was no such thing as safe.Only away.

We slipped out into the night.The air outside was cool, metallic, heavy with the stink of rain and diesel.I followed him down the street, still high on the music, on the press of bodies and the electric pulse of the crowd.

“That show,” I said breathlessly.“God, that one song, ‘We walk in lines but dream in fire’?I’ve never heard anything like it.It was like...like they knew.”

Petyr glanced back and smiled, the corner of his mouth lifting like a secret he was sharing only with me.“I knew you’d feel it.There’s a storm in you, Dimitri.You just hide it better than the rest of us.”

His hand brushed my shoulder, grounding me and lighting me up at the same time.He nodded toward the side street.“Sanctuary moved again.It’s nearby in an old Orthodox church.Practically rubble, but nobody goes there.No one dares.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he said.“Come on.Might be the only place in the city where we can breathe.”

I let myself smile, even if just for a moment.

We rounded the corner and there was the church.Tall and broken, its onion domes cracked like eggshells, the stained glass shattered.The cross on the steeple had fallen long ago, leaving just a jagged scar of metal behind.The place looked like it had been abandoned by both God and country.

We stepped onto the sidewalk, and then everything collapsed.

There was a scream I didn’t recognize as my own.Bright lights.Boots.A fist in my gut.A baton across my back.The world spun.

“DOWN ON THE GROUND, PIDO!”

“Fucking cocksucking degenerates!”

They were everywhere.Six?Ten?I didn’t know.Faces blurred, red with rage.Someone slammed my head into the pavement and my teeth clacked hard enough to taste blood.My arms were twisted behind me, cuffed, yanked.I couldn’t breathe.

I looked up, dazed, and saw Petyr a few feet away—face down, one arm raised, screaming as a boot landed in his ribs.

“No!”I choked, straining against the hands gripping me.“Don’t touch him!”

“Shut up, you diseased little whore!”A blow to the head.Stars behind my eyes.Laughter.

“You sick faggots think you can crawl out of your holes and defile a church?In my city?”one of them growled, his breath hot and rancid near my ear.“You think the Motherland needs your kind?”

I went still.My mouth was open, but I couldn’t make a sound.My chest tightened, crushing in on itself.I saw my mother’s face—with her soft voice and her careful hands—flash across my vision like a ghost.I saw my father’s scowl.Heard his voice, so cold, so clipped: This is not how men behave.

Shame surged through me, hot and blinding.What would they think if they saw me like this?

My knees scraped the pavement as they dragged me toward an armored van.My breath came in short, panicked gasps.I can’t go in there.I can’t.The doors gaped open like a mouth waiting to swallow us whole.Petyr stumbled beside me, blood smeared across his cheekbone.Our eyes met—and for the first time, I saw fear in his.

Genuine fear.

And then it hit me, all at once.

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