Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91149 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91149 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
She catches me in a vulnerable moment when she enters the room, her eyes moving to the painting, and then to me. I avert my gaze to avoid the discomfort of this situation.
“Everything okay?” I clean up some odds and ends to keep my hands busy.
“You haven’t been here.” Her words are an accusation, and she is past the point of hiding it.
“I haven’t been with anyone else, zvezda. I’ve been helping Alexei.”
“Is Talia okay?” she asks.
“She is healthy, according to Alexei. But I imagine, given the circumstances, she could be doing much better.”
“I thought better of him,” she answers quietly.
“It’s easier to believe the worst in someone, is it not?”
When she doesn’t answer, I’m left no choice but to look. She has always been light on her feet, but today, she appears to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders.
“What’s going to happen to us, Nika?”
I release a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. She deserves to know the truth. She’s waited for it so long. Nakya is not ignorant to the ways of our world, but it doesn’t mean she will understand. There is no softening the blow of the only words I have to offer her.
“I have but two choices, my sweet. And you will not like either option.”
“Tell me,” she insists. “I can handle it. I want to know.”
I’ve tried to stay away from her, but when she’s close enough for me to smell her intoxicating sweetness, I can’t remember why I needed to avoid her in the first place. When I gesture for her, she comes, and it only makes it worse.
“The truth is, zvezda, it was never our fate to end up together. The stars are not in our favor, and the only way this can end is in tragedy.”
“I don’t believe that.” She shakes her head, hair falling loosely around her pretty face.
“You know this world. Nothing is ever easy, and choices must be made. I can either forsake you and marry Ana, or I can let you go.”
“Forsaking yourself,” she finishes for me.
I toy with her hair and kiss her gently on the lips. Her eyes fall shut, and she leans her forehead against mine, soft and sad.
“Why can’t we change our fates? Let’s realign our stars, Nika. We can do it together. You can use your talents for your own benefit. You can paint, and I can dance, and—”
“You speak of impossible dreams.” I close my own eyes and inhale her, drowning in her innocence. “This is not the way our worlds work, pet.”
“It can be. Whatever we have to do—”
“I’m going to kill your father, Nakya. I’m going to torture him slowly, and I will take his last breath. So tell me now that we can be together.”
Her body turns rigid in my arms, and just as I suspected, she retreats. I feel the loss of her everywhere, but I don’t force her to come back. I want her to know that when her father dies, it will be at my hand.
The man abused her, and for that alone, he deserves to die. But it is her blood. And just as I’m trying to make peace with killing my own father, she will not easily find peace with my decision.
“Why?” she implores. “The debt?”
“It was never about the debt.”
She paces the length of the room, collecting her thoughts and shaking her head. “I knew it couldn’t just be about the debt. You knew too much about my life. You were so angry with me, and … tell me why. I deserve to know.”
“He murdered my mother.”
She stops, and her sweetness turns to venom. “His mistress?”
“His slave,” I answer. “A forced whore.”
She blanches and rubs absently at her arms, visibly choosing denial. It’s easier for her to believe that the many women who stole her father’s attentions away from her sick mother were by choice. She has made it a full-time job to resent them. Her childhood gifted her a front row seat to the damages of infidelity, ensuring that she would remain steadfast in her resolve that she will never be a mistress. But she never saw the opposite side of the coin.
“I choose the second option.” She squeezes her arms around herself. “Let me go. Have mercy, Nika. Let me leave while I still have a chance.”
“Nakya.” I step toward her, and she retreats.
“No,” she says. “I think this should stop here. Please, let it stop here. I can’t do this anymore.”
“Where is he going?”
Mischa fiddles with the cigarette between his fingers, tapping it against the end of his thumb before flipping it over and repeating the action all over again. He’s reluctant to answer, and it makes me fidgety.
“He’s going to help his brother.”
“He’s been helping his brother for weeks. What makes this time any different?”