Page 101 of Blood & Snow

"And tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow we do what needs to be done."

The simplicity of his answer chills me.

This is what he does day in and day out, and he expects me to do it too.

There will be no more pretending I can return to my old life.

No more believing that I can keep one foot in his world and one in mine.

Now that I've confessed my love for him, there is no going back.

I am his, completely and thoroughly his.

And there is nothing that can change that.

He drives me home through empty Moscow streets.

Snow continues to fall, covering the city in fresh white that will hide the stains of what we did tonight.

I watch the flakes catch in the headlights and think about how beautiful they look, how pure.

Beauty and horror.

Innocence and corruption.

The two can exist side by side, I'm learning.

They can even exist within the same person.

When we reach my building, he doesn't kiss me goodbye.

Instead, he catches my hand as I reach for the door handle.

"Ptichka."

I turn back.

"You did well tonight."

The praise shouldn't matter, but it does.

It settles something inside me that I didn't realize needed settling.

I climb the stairs to my apartment, his words echoing in my mind.

Inside, the yolka waits in the corner, half-decorated and innocent.

Anya and Mikhail's handmade ornaments hang from the lower branches, crooked but earnest in their imperfection.

I touch one of the paper angels and remember being their age, believing in magic and miracles.

Believing that good and evil existed in separate worlds that never touched.

Now I know better.

Now I know that sometimes they live in the same heart, in the same bed, under the same skin.