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Chapter Ten

Petyr

“S how me everything. You know, all of this world. I want to experience it all.”

I stared at Dimitri in the flickering lowlight of Sanctuary—the shadows licking across his cheekbones like ghosts refusing to let go.

His shirt was still open from earlier, clinging damply to his chest. His hair, mussed from my fingers, fell across his forehead in a way that made me ache all over again.

But his eyes—those sharp, searching eyes—held something I hadn’t seen before: hunger.

Not for me, not exactly. For everything.

For life, freedom, color, music, and madness.

I smiled, unable to help myself. “Let’s get out of here.”

He grinned and took my hand without hesitation, his callused fingers threading through mine.

We slipped through the sticky heat and cigarette haze, stepping over a pair of middle-aged men tangled together on the cracked tile floor.

Sanctuary had been built inside the bones of this ancient bathhouse, the plaster walls still stained from steam and old sins.

I hesitated at the doorway just long enough to glance back once.

Outside, the icy wind tugged at my coat, and I let go of his hand reluctantly, tucking both into my pockets to hide how much I already missed the warmth of him.

“There’s so much I want to show you,” I whispered. “So much more than what they allow us. Beyond the bread lines and block housing. Beyond Mother Russia’s stone hands.”

We walked in silence, our footsteps echoing against the wet pavement. Leningrad was asleep, mostly. A tram clattered somewhere in the distance. A couple argued softly in a stairwell. But here, in these narrow hours before dawn, it felt like we were the only ones awake.

We stopped in front of a squat little building half-swallowed by a dying tree. People were moving quietly in and out, some dressed like peasants, others like they’d just stepped off a stage in Paris. One woman wore a feather boa and no pants. No one looked twice.

Dimitri cocked his head. “What is this?”

“Novye Khudozhniki,” I said. “The New Artists.”

He blinked. “This is real?”

“Very real. Come.”

Inside, the building felt alive, like it breathed.

The walls were cluttered with canvases—bold splashes of red and black, distorted faces, obscene symbols tucked between layers of oil and paper.

The floor was a chaotic swirl of limbs and color, artists sprawled on beanbags or balancing on window ledges, bottles of homemade vodka passed between paint-smeared hands.

And the music.

Atonal and glitchy. Some strange fusion of jazz, punk, and maybe classical if you were drunk enough. It didn’t follow rules. Instead, it bent time, and made the symphony in my mind crackle and bloom.

“Petyr!”

I turned and grinned. Timur.

He swept toward us wearing a kimono made of sewn-together tablecloths, his golden hair tied back with what looked like a phone cord. His eyes sparkled with a madness only genuine artists and revolutionaries possess.

“You brought a boy. I love a boy with wonder in his eyes.”

“This is Dimitri,” I said.

Dimitri nodded, clearly unsure if he should offer his hand or bow or just stand still. Timur laughed and kissed him on both cheeks.

“Oh, you’re delicious. Come. Let me show you our blasphemy.”

He took us through the warren-like halls, and each corner of the space was its own rebellion.

A wall-sized mural of Lenin with hollowed eyes and bleeding teeth.

Next to it was a sculpture made entirely from typewriter keys and bone.

A film projected silently on a cracked white wall, looping two dancers in gas masks kissing as the city burned around them.

Dimitri couldn’t speak. He stared, breath caught in his chest. He reached out more than once—fingertips ghosting across paint or glass—and then snatched his hand back as if afraid to break the spell.

I watched him instead of the art. The way his lips parted. The way his pupils dilated. How his hand drifted to his chest, as if something inside him was cracking open and letting the light in.

Timur talked and waved and preached, but all I could hear was music. A symphony blooming in my mind, louder and richer than ever before. Strings over brass over wind. The avant garde jazz in the air mixed with Shostakovich in my bones.

It was beautiful.

And then—without fanfare—I realized I was falling in love.

Not with the moment. Not with the art. With him.

Dimitri turned to me then, his eyes shining. “How have I seen none of this before?”

“Because they don’t want you to.”

He stepped closer, so close our shoulders touched. “I want more.”

I took his hand again.

“Good. Because there’s more. So much more. And I want to show you all of it.”

Timur gestured at a towering sculpture made of welded car parts and porcelain doll heads, one eye still blinking lazily from a broken mechanism.

“You see? This is our answer to the West’s pretentious postmodernism.

We don’t need Warhol or Basquiat. We’ve got rust and grief. And look how beautiful it is.”

I smiled, leading Dimitri closer to the piece. “So you’re saying trauma is the new paintbrush?”

“Exactly,” Timur said, jabbing a finger in the air like he was conducting a manic symphony.

“Art born out of oppression is the most sincere. What do the Americans know of hunger? Of being followed in the street because your ideas are too colorful?” He threw his arms wide, his voice echoing just enough to make a few heads turn.

“They have freedom and too much choice. It waters everything down. But here—our constraints sharpen the blade.”

“You sound like a slogan,” I teased, folding my arms. “But even you can’t deny that what they’re doing in New York right now is brilliant. Graffiti, street fashion, the clubs—it’s chaos in the best way. Theirs is art without a ceiling. Ours is… art with a gun at its back.”

Timur grinned. “Which makes ours braver.”

Dimitri’s eyes flicked between us, enthralled. It was adorable. The way his brow furrowed as he tried to keep up with our banter, like he was eavesdropping on a conversation between two galaxies colliding.

We stepped into another room, this one quieter, painted in deep purples and black.

A massive sculpture stood in the center: a twisting column of mirrors, feathers, and broken television sets stacked like an altar.

Its reflection caught every piece of light in the room and scattered it like a disco ball, mourning its own existence.

And in the corner—two women. Half-shrouded in shadow, their silhouettes whispered against each other, lips meeting in a soft, deliberate kiss.

Dimitri froze.

I felt him stop beside me. His breath hitched, just for a moment. I followed his gaze and saw them, too.

They weren’t trying to hide, not exactly. But their corner was dark enough, and the music loud enough, that they could’ve easily gone unnoticed. Still, to a man like Dimitri—who’d only just touched the edge of this world—it must’ve looked like a miracle.

Timur was called away by someone tugging at his arm, and with a quick, fond pat to my shoulder, he disappeared into the crowd.

Dimitri turned to me, his voice quiet. “Is everyone here… like us?”

I let out a breath, slow. “No,” I said, guiding him back into the corridor with its crumbling brick and flickering light bulbs. “Not everyone.”

He looked disappointed. Or maybe just confused.

I lowered my voice. “Those women in there? They’re taking an enormous risk being that public. I admire it. But it’s dangerous.”

“Why?” he asked, eyes still darting, still trying to understand.

I hesitated, then gave a crooked smile. “Because the state cares a hell of a lot more about what two men do than what two women get up to. Ask the men in the Party—they’re more likely to get off imagining two women together than to find it threatening.

We’re the threat. They see us as… political contamination. ”

He frowned, clearly turning the words over in his mind.

I thought of Vera. Her careful smile, the sadness behind her eyes. The weight she carried. And then I thought of Dimitri.

He could never know she was one of us.

Dimitri yawned, almost apologetically, and rubbed the back of his neck.

I glanced at a battered clock nailed to a pillar, its hands stuttering around like they were drunk. Nearly three in the morning.

Shit.

“We have to be at work in a few hours,” I murmured, groaning internally. “Come on, let’s go home. This revolution will still be here tomorrow.”

He didn’t argue. Just nodded, sleep softening his features. I led him back out into the Leningrad night, the scent of cold stone and stale beer chasing us down the alley.

* * *

The cab smelled like coffee and cigarettes. Dimitri sat beside me, legs spread slightly apart, his shoulders sinking slowly against the worn leather seat. We said nothing since leaving Novye Khudozhniki, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. Just sleepy. Full.

I hated spending the money on a taxi. God, I hated it.

It was practically half a week’s groceries just to shave forty minutes off the commute.

But we both had to be up before the sun, and I couldn’t stomach the idea of standing in the freezing wind waiting for a tram with our heads full of dreams and no time to sleep.

I glanced over at Dimitri.

He yawned again. This time he didn’t even try to hide it, just leaned his head back and let it out with a soft, rumbling sigh. He looked… Jesus. Adorable. His face was flushed from the warmth of the cab, his curls a little wild, his eyelashes casting shadows on his cheeks.

There was something boyish about him when he was tired. Something soft and unguarded. And I didn’t want this night to end.

I wanted to fall asleep beside him. Wanted to press my face to his chest and feel it rise and fall. I wanted, just for a few hours, to pretend we had something that resembled peace.

And then it hit me.

Vera was with Mira tonight.