Page 49 of The Fire Beneath the Frost

The moment we stepped into the grand foyer of the concert hall, I felt like someone had stuffed cotton into my lungs.The chandelier above us sparkled, and the crowd—all red lipstick, stiff collars, and faint clouds of perfume—buzzed with anticipation.

I kept Mira on one arm and my nerves on the other.But Mira, bless her, was...surprisingly easy to like.

“God,” she muttered as we climbed the marble stairs, “if one more insufferable man with a mustache offers me a cigarette and a dissertation on Tchaikovsky’s ‘secret meaning,’ I swear I’ll throw myself off the balcony.”

I laughed, startled by the honesty.

She shot me a smirk.“Don’t worry, you’re safe.You don’t look like the type who gives impromptu lectures.Petyr said you were a good listener.”

I glanced sideways at Petyr, who was walking just ahead of us with Vera, then back at Mira.“He says a lot of things.”

Mira’s eyes sparkled.“Oh, don’t I know it.”

By the time we reached our seats—velvet red, row six—I’d stopped imagining how wrong everything could go and started thinking maybe this might work.Mira took my arm again as we sat, and when she leaned close to whisper a joke about the stern usher’s resemblance to this new politician named Yeltsin, I actually grinned.

Petyr took the seat beside me.Vera slid in next to him, Mira on my other side, and for a brief, fleeting second, I almost believed the lie we were living.

Then a thunderous voice rolled over us from behind.

“Vera Kuznetsova!”

I turned in my seat like someone had yanked a leash.

Our factory boss, Comrade Korovin, was behind us in row seven, puffed up like a prize-winning rooster in his best suit.And beside him, blinking owlishly through horn-rimmed glasses, was a woman draped in lilacs and pearls.

“My dear, what a surprise!”Korovin boomed.“Didn’t expect to see our factory’s shining star among the artsy types.”

Vera gave him her warmest, most calculated smile.“Comrade Korovin, of course you’d be here.Revolutionary spirit in the music, no?”

He guffawed like she’d just made a dirty joke.“Exactly!Let me introduce my wife—Elizaveta.”

Elizaveta nodded like royalty granting an audience.

“Ah,” Korovin added, “and this must be your little group.I know young Dimitri from his father, and Petyr, of course.And this is...?”

“Mira,” she said, shaking his hand with a smile.“I’m a Party member, Comrade Korovin.Cultural affairs, district seventeen.”

That lit him up like a propaganda poster.“Ah-ha!A woman of substance!”

Introductions fizzled out as the house lights flickered.We all turned forward, dutiful, reverent.

The orchestra tuned.

The conductor appeared.

The curtain rose.

And Petyr’s hand slid onto my thigh.

At first it was just his pinky, feather-light and dangerous.Then another finger.Then a slow, lazy tracing of the seam of my trousers that made it hard to breathe.

I couldn’t move.I couldn’t look at him.Korovin sat directly behind us like the specter of Siberia, and I felt Mira’s warmth on my other side, her arm brushing mine whenever she shifted.

Vera was likely too engrossed in the performance to notice anything—but what if she wasn’t?

Still...I didn’t push Petyr away.

His touch sent heat rushing up my neck.My hands clenched the armrests like they were lifelines.Onstage, dancers flung themselves into rituals of ecstasy and death, but I had my own ritual going on right here: denial, panic, arousal, repeat.

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