Chapter 30: Choosing Sides
When Yelena entered the room, her face was painted with worry and concern, the kind only a mother could hold, like a warrior who had just crossed a battlefield to find her children after they’d been gravely wounded.
And it was only natural she looked that way, given how much she adored both Charlotte and Mika.
But the truth was, when she had first called her daughter, breathless and panicked, and learnt that Mika had been hit by a truck, Yelena hadn’t thought too much of it.
Not because she didn’t care, on the contrary, she cared more than anyone. But because she knew Mika. She knew how strong and resilient, no, how utterly impenetrable that boy was.
There was no way something as mundane as a truck could bring her Mika down. She had even laughed it off at first, gently chiding her daughter for worrying too much.
But then...Charlotte’s next words froze the blood in her veins.
"Mom...After the truck hit him...he didn’t move for a couple minutes. He just laid there. Completely still."
Yelena’s face had turned pale as ice at that moment. Her chest tightened. Her stomach dropped like a stone into cold water.
That...That had never happened before.
Mika was the kind of boy who could walk away from anything, the kind who brushed off injuries that would leave others in pieces. But the way Charlotte described it, the hesitation, the silence after impact, it gnawed at her heart like a disease.
And in that moment, all her composure as Yelena Dimitrivitch Heavensblade, the Blademaiden of Void and Decay and one of the five battle angels that saved the world, shattered.
And she didn’t waste another breath.