Chapter Text
They had stormed the gates.
They overwhelmed the guards.
And now they were running for their lives.
The man, the young woman, the boy, and the baby in the woman’s arms.
Screams echoed through the palace. People ran in every direction. The boy could smell smoke.
“Your Highnesses!”
A girl’s voice cut through the chaos.
“This way!”
She pressed something in the wall, and a hidden passage opened.
The boy moved to follow, but the man caught his shoulder. He pulled a ring from his hand and pressed it into the boy’s palm.
He kissed the woman, then the baby.
“Go. I will catch up with you.”
“Elijah—” the woman began.
“Hayley, we don’t have time. You need to go.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
The woman stepped into the passage. The boy followed. The girl closed the wall behind them.
The boy did not look back.
The passage opened to the outside. Winter air hit them immediately—cold, sharp, unforgiving—but they couldn’t stop.
The girl held out her arm, stopping the boy just as people rushed past outside. None of them noticed the opening.
“Now,” she whispered. “Go.”
The boy ran.
He squeezed through the fence bars. The woman passed him the baby before climbing after him. Once they were both through, they ran again.
Through streets. Through crowds. Through noise and confusion.
But they never lost each other.
They reached the train station.
The last train was already moving.
The woman made it.
The boy ran harder, pushing himself to keep up—
—and slipped.
“K—!” the woman cried.
The boy hit the ground.
Darkness.
Kaleb woke with a start.
He had the dream again.
The same one he’d had for as long as he could remember—which wasn’t saying much. He could only remember the last eight years.
He remembered nothing before he was ten. Only fragments:
His name started with a K.
He thought it was Kaleb.
And the earliest thing he could recall was waking up at a train station in the cold… with a baby in his arms and a ring too big for him in his hand.
His niece. Hannah.
The only family he had.
The only reason he stayed in this miserable excuse for an orphanage.
It wasn’t the worst place. They weren’t beaten. They weren’t starved. There was always food. Always a roof over their heads.
At least… when the roof decided to stay put.
But today was his last day here. He was eighteen.
Well—he thought he was.
No one knew for sure. But it had been eight years to the day since he and Hannah arrived, and Comrade Phlegmenkoff counted it. That was enough.
Today, he was legally an adult. Which meant he was leaving.
And he was taking Hannah with him.
They were going to St. Petersburg.
“Why are we going?” Hannah had asked him a few days ago.
“St. Petersburg’s a city,” he told her. “Cities are big. Big cities mean jobs. Jobs mean food. And a roof over our heads that’s ours.”
She hadn’t asked why again. Only when.
Today.
February 28, 1929.
Today, they would leave.
He fiddled with the ring on its cord, a mindless habit. Well, no time to start gathering his things like now.