Chapter 23
“Do you want me to become one of your sculptures?”
VALENTINA
At first, I think I’ve walked into a graveyard. An intense one.
Bone. Glass. Dust. Dead flowers with crisp and colorless petals thread through the ribs of skeletal birds, deer, and foxes—each one posed as if frozen in the moment they last drew breath.
Some still mid-lunge. Some in sleep. Some stare with hollow sockets toward the sea.
The air smells like iron and lavender, salt and ancient rot.
“Roman… what is this?” My voice feels too loud.
He doesn’t answer right away. I step closer to one of the skeletal birds, its wings spread wide. Something translucent and crystalline like frost or volcanic glass reinforces the delicate, white-gray bones. Around its neck, there’s a crown of dried asters and larkspur. Mourning flowers.
“You preserved them,” I whisper. “They were already dead, but you kept them.”
He turns slightly. I catch the glint of metal beneath his jawline—one of his tattoos curling down his throat like ivy. “I don’t like losing beautiful things.”
There’s no menace in his words. That terrifies me more.
Then I see the glass.
Beyond the skeletal garden, there’s a second space—a mirrored realm of clear, hand-blown sculptures, each one a reflection of the dead animals but glowing with fractured, refracted light.
A glass fox is curled around a bone fox.
Glass birds mimic flight above broken-winged ones on the ground.
A spectral waltz, eerie but beautiful. Raw and honest.
I don’t know when I started crying.
I walk between them. My hands tremble as I pass between glass and bone, flower and ash, love and obsession. I realize this is what I am to him. A memory he won’t let die. A ghost he’s trying to resurrect.
A thing of blood and light trapped between preservation and possession.
I lower my head, pursing my lips as I walk among the sculptures. “Do you want me to become one of your sculptures?” I ask him, not looking back. “Something you keep? Something that never leaves?”
Silence.
“This place is not a cage,” Roman says behind me, voice like velvet-wrapped steel. “It’s a sanctuary. To protect and preserve.”
I stiffen, whispering, “My memory is a ghost.”
“And so it is my honor,” he continues, stepping closer until I feel the heat of his presence at my back, “to protect, preserve, and possess you.” I nearly shudder when he fingers a few locks of my hair.
“You may feel trapped between worlds like these specimens—but you’re not.
You transcend my world, Valentina. You are more alive than any being on this earth could ever be.
” His words are holy in the exquisite horrors around us.
The silence thickens, along with the tension, as he guides me beyond the glass dome and onto another stone walkway. It leads to a row of hedges trimmed in a labyrinth style.
A gnarled tree lies cracked across part of the path, its limbs twisted like bones.
Roman’s jaw tightens. He mutters, “Perimeter breach. Sector 4,” the words clipped and low as they transmit through his embedded chip.
When I look up, he’s tugging on a pair of black gloves, cracking the leather.
“Storm last night knocked it down. No need for alarm.”
Just beyond the hedges, I catch sight of a wrought iron fence—old but climbable. Its black teeth gleam between patches of bramble like a dare.
Once we’re closer to that fence and the downed tree, I confront him, “Roman,” I say sharply, “how can you spend days with me, make me feel like we belong, but you never tell me what you do? What your life really is…?”
He tenses. A muscle ticks in his jaw.
Narrowing my eyes, I touch his arm, feeling the muscle flex.
My chest aches. “I mean it. This estate can’t be just inherited wealth.
You mentioned military “adjacent” work. Politics.
You vanish, you know things, too many things.
How am I supposed to trust you as my husband when you keep me in the dark? When I need light more than ever?”
His eyes flash. The green in them turns razor-sharp, colder, harder. “Because some things,” he says low, his voice laced with frost, “aren’t yours to know yet. Your emotions are justified. And it may make me a shameless bastard, but I protect you by keeping those shadows from reaching you.”
“Protect me?” I spit the words, fury bubbling up. “Or control me? I’m your wife, Roman. You call me your queen. Or am I just another specimen in your collection? Something to display in a glass case while you keep the real you locked behind doors I can’t reach? Do you even want me to remember?”
He steps toward me. The air tightens, coils. His voice drops to a growl, deep and dangerous. “You don’t get to question me like that.”
“I do.” I dig in, refusing to back down. “Because I’m drowning in this fog, and you won’t throw me a lifeline. You claim to protect me, but I never asked you to be my jailer.”
His hand shoots out, fast—too fast—and catches my wrist.
And I snap. I twist, rip free, and bring my knee up with everything I have. The sickening thud is followed by his sharp gasp. Roman folds over, pain etched across his features. But there’s something else in his eyes.
Shock. Fury. And God help me—something that looks too much like respect.
Heart crashing, lungs burning I bolt into the woods. Past the bones and glass and golden light. Past the man who says I’m alive but keeps trying to silence my soul.
I run toward the trees, making a beeline for the fence. I’m not even running toward freedom, just away from him. I’m running toward breath where his doesn’t cloud my senses.
“Fuck, Valya!” I hear him snarl several feet from me as he pursues.
The fence isn’t high. I shed my coat, getting a firm grip with my hands. He might be stronger, but I’m fast as hell.
“Get away from there!” His voice booms as my boots slap the frost-hardened ground on the other side.
But I’m already sprinting into the tree line. And then—
Click.
I freeze, heart seizing mid-beat. Just. Pure. Split. Second. Terror.
“Valentina!” Roman’s shout cuts the air—raw, ragged.
Then the world blurs.
He crashes into me like a battering ram, wrapping around me just as the landmine explodes beneath our feet.
We hit the ground hard, rolling. Moss and leaves burst around us like confetti. The blast is muted but jarring—earth jumping, ears ringing, pressure clapping the air from my lungs.
He shields me. All of him braced over all of me.
And still, I see red.
“You insane bastard!” I shriek, pushing at his shoulders, clawing at his face. “Maybe a heads-up next time?! Like, I don’t know, ‘Stop, wife, before you step on a goddamn landmine!’”
He growls but doesn’t move. “It was a stun charge—”
“Oh, great! What else have you got out here? Acid pits? Guard wolves? Bombing drones?!”
He grips my throat, choking, enough to still me. Eyes molten. Something primal in him has snapped. Something I saw in the dungeon when he first fucked me.
Voice like thunder smothered in velvet, he snarls, “Yes.” He cocks his head, nose skimming my cheek. “And anything else I need to keep you safe.”
I struggle in his grip, rasping out, “Safe from what? Just tell me!”
“No.”
He rises slowly, looking down on me. I prop myself on my elbows, hair tangled, face flushed with fury. My body still shakes…not just from the cold or the explosion. But by the devil in his eye.
“God, you’re such a control-freak psycho,” I snap, breath still heaving, bones still rattled.
His eyes drag over me. He scrubs a hand down his face. Exhales. Then chuffs a low, dangerous laugh. It’s worse than the devil. It’s a calm devil. He knows exactly what he’s going to do, how he’s going to punish me.
“You look good beneath me, Valentina,” he says, voice rough with restraint. “But you’ll look even better upside down.”
My brow scrunches. “What the hell does that—”
Snap. A low hiss.
A sudden rope lashes out from the moss-laced tree beside me and whips around my ankle in a brutal arc.
I’m hanging upside down. Just like he said.
The flared ends of the dress gather at my hips, exposing my black stockings where they end at my thighs, but the rest of the fabric is still snug, preserving what little dignity I have.
“Roman, you mother fucking jackass. Let me down!”
I spit fire and fury, swinging with fists balled, knowing it’s in vain. Especially when he’s circling me like a predator, stroking his jaw, amused.
“Ungh, all the blood is rushing to my head,” I groan.
“Likewise.”
He grins, and I want to punch him in his stupid, ridiculous, inhumanly beautiful face. I shouldn’t. Oh, I shouldn’t. But my eyes flick toward his breeches. Yeah, he’s bulging steel, alright. He chuckles darkly, knowing what I just did.
“All the ways I could punish you, moya zhena.” He taps his jaw.
“Then, get it over with already,” I fume. How long before he lifts me?
When his hands descend to my neckline, I gasp because he’s about to destroy any dignity I have left. My hands come up, attacking his forearms, but it’s no use.
“Roman,” I moan as he rips the dress right down the middle and tears it clean off me. “I loved that—”
“I will buy you ten more…if you’re a good girl, Maya Valya,” he says, barely above a purr while tracing one finger along the black lace barely covering my breasts.
My nipples bead. And it’s not just from the cold. My breath hitches when he grabs a fistful of my hair, and before I can even snap my teeth, he’s fixed it into a messy bun.
For fucks sake! It takes him all of a heartbeat to unsnap the bra and tear it off me, followed by my thong. The cruel Alaskan air bites at my skin, the wind lashing my exposed folds. Goosebumps spread. I try bucking, but my body just swings, making me more uncomfortable.
Then, Roman reaches inside his coat, working his hand behind his back. My pulse spins out of control as he reveals the object he had stashed there.