Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 147734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 739(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 739(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
It’s because I’m feeling guilty.
It has to be.
“Come on, smile, Mishka. You look better when you do.”
“I told you not to call me that,” I grind out, watching our surroundings to avoid looking at him. “Stop picking fights when we need to survive together, asshole.”
“I’m not trying to fight, just stating facts…” He trails off, pointing his gun to my left.
I spin and fire at the same time he does.
My bullet tears through the head. Yulian’s finds the heart.
I narrow my eyes but stay silent as he scoops up the dead man’s rifle. I take it from him and sling it across my chest as we make our way up a steep incline. The hill punishes with every step, and I hear his breathing roughen, becoming ragged, uneven.
Gunfire echoes farther off now. The sharp pop, pop, pop is being swallowed by the flapping of crows and ravens scattering overhead.
I sweep the ridge one last time before grabbing his arm—the one without the gun—and hauling him in, my other arm circling his waist.
Although I feel his stare drilling holes into me, I refuse to meet it.
But I can still sense his grin anyway. “Aw, worried about me? I’m so touched, I might die.”
“Please do so you won’t slow me down.”
“You’re so cold.”
“Logical.”
“Inflexible.”
“Rational.”
“Boring.”
“Let’s agree to disagree.”
“I guess. At least you’re still holding me up.”
“So we can move faster.”
“I’m hurt. We could die any second now. Can’t you be nice to me?”
“Why should I?”
“I don’t know, maybe because I might be the last person you see before you die.” He slides an arm around my waist, his fingers squeezing the muscle a bit too tight for comfort. “Heard you spend the afterlife with the person you die with.”
“Nonsense.”
“There must be a religion somewhere that believes that.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“Then I’ll invent one.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Is that another word for perfect?”
I open my mouth to cuss him out, but the sweat streaming down his temple catches my eye—and the blood that’s still gushing, staining both him and me.
The bandage helps, but it’s not enough. His lips are paler, tinged a darker blue.
He slumps harder against me—not because he wants to, but because his body is giving out.
But he doesn’t stop.
Yulian keeps staggering forward with an unsteady gait, but his eyes stay fixed on the horizon, his gun sweeping the tree line like he’s daring the forest to come at him.
I’m keeping an eye on him and our surroundings, focusing on the trees and the bushes.
While this isn’t the first time I’ve been in danger, it’s definitely the worst. There was an attempt to kidnap me and my cousin on our way home from school when we were around seven, but my father’s guards saved us before we knew what was happening.
A couple of years ago, someone tried to attack me and my dad while we were at a horseback riding club, but with the guards around, Dad didn’t even flinch as he helped me rein in the horse. He just sighed as Uncle Victor and his men killed the attackers in cold blood.
Dad then proceeded to wipe everyone related to them off the face of the earth.
When Mom asked Dad if maybe he went too far, he said, “Of course not. They disturbed our father-son time. Evidently, I needed to eradicate their bloodline. Think of it as forced evolution of sorts.”
Point is, I’ve never been in this type of situation, where I’m completely isolated from my guards, and while I believe it’s a good experience to practice everything I’ve learned, it’s still dangerous and full of the unknown that I hate so much.
“Over there.” The words are strained, Yulian jutting his chin in the direction of some bushes.
I’m frowning, contemplating whether this is a good hiding place until we approach it.
Even though it looks like bushes and rocks, when we slide down, there’s an opening to a small cave, completely hidden from view by the plants surrounding it.
The cave’s entrance is so narrow that it brushes my shoulders as we slip in, the stone feeling cold and damp.
Inside, the air turns cooler, denser, carrying the faint mineral scent of earth. The space opens just enough to fit me and Yulian if we huddle close.
Water trickles from somewhere deeper, a rhythmic drip that echoes like a quiet heartbeat. The walls glisten with veins of quartz, catching stray beams of filtered light, and the silence is thick, only punctured by the sound of the water.
Yulian pulls from my grip while I’m distracted by studying our surroundings, but his hand lingers on my waist for longer than it needs to.
Almost as if he’s feeling me up—
No. I’m imagining things.
As he sits with his back to the cave wall and places his gun to his side, I drop to my knees in front of him and neatly place the rifle and my gun next to his. I open my backpack and toss him a bottle of water since he lost his when we were shot at, and then I start rummaging through it.