Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
“ H ey . Hey, wake up.”
What felt like a small finger poked me in the side. Paralyzing fear followed right after, bleeding through my consciousness as I went taut like a stretched elastic band.
“Oh, come on,” that same voice whined. “I know you can hear me. The doctor said he stopped with the mor . . . mar feen, or whatever it’s called, so why are you pretending to be asleep?”
Before I could react, a weight suddenly collapsed beside me. It was so unexpected that my eyes flew open, only to find a girl perched on her knees near my hip, her pale white hands clutching her thighs like that was the only thing holding her back. The air practically vibrated around her, her eagerness—for what, I wasn’t sure—grossly palpable.
I didn’t recognize her.
My gaze flew past her blond head, searching the room we were in for something familiar. The walls were bare with a single window overlooking a murky gray sky. There was a desk, too, but it was too far away for me to get a good look at the papers stacked on top of it.
The girl’s stare followed the direction mine had strayed. “Do you want me to get them for you?” she asked, cocking her head in a way that instantly put me on alert.
I didn’t say anything back.
Couldn’t, honestly, because there was a panicked lump growing in my throat.
Who was she?
Where was I?
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Her tone was curious. “If you can’t, I speak Russian, too.” She tilted her head even more, the long length of her white-blond hair hanging like a veil in front of her narrow face. “Do you speak Russian?” She launched into a string of foreign-sounding words that barely penetrated the thick fog swirling around my brain.
The more she talked, the more animated she became and the closer she got to me.
Stop, I wanted to shout.
Get back .
Then her knee pressed into my thigh, her hand moving to my shin, and the elastic band snapped; I jerked away so violently that the sheet wrapped around my legs went tight for one wretched second before loosening completely and dumping me on the floor in an ungraceful heap. Pain erupted in a flash of heat across my body, but I almost didn’t care how badly I hurt.
I just needed space—to breathe, to think.
Where was I?
Who was she?
Don’t touch me .
There was a sudden commotion behind me, a door cracking open, a sharply uttered, “Nina, I told you to stay out of this room,” but all of it was muffled because, at some point, I’d curled into a ball on the floor, hands pressed against my ringing ears, one loose thread away from opening my mouth on a bloodcurdling scream.
Who was she?
Where was I?
Don’t touch ? —
“Boy.” This belonged to a deep, thickly accented voice. “Calm yourself.”
A hand landed on my shoulder. It was heavier than the girl’s, the weight of it like an anchor, yanking me straight down to the ocean floor. Maybe he thought the casual touch would ground me, but it had the opposite effect, spiking my already shallow breathing to the point where I gasped for air.
Frozen in place, I didn’t pull my hands away from my ears even as he continued to stare at me as if I was already a lost cause. Just like with the girl, I didn’t recognize him either.
“You were found almost dead by the river,” he said without preamble. “Do you remember?”
Almost dead . . .
A violent shiver whispered down my spine. I didn’t remember a river, and I didn’t remember being almost dead. Then I actually took a moment to look down at myself and realized that in my tumble to the floor, I’d ripped an IV out from the back of my hand. There were bruises. Like I’d fought something and lost. A hasty, upward glance revealed that behind the . . . the hospital bed, it looked like, there was a bunch of medical equipment that hadn’t been in view before. And I was wearing some sort of paper-thin gown, like the kind patients wore in hospital.
“The doctor said you’re lucky that you weren’t out there all night.”
I didn’t feel lucky. I felt like I’d been hit by a lorry gunning at full speed. Despite the throbbing pain radiating from my temple, there was no ignoring the mammoth-sized man in front of me. He had a stocky build with a thick neck, along with dark brown hair that had been combed back from his face with ruthless precision. He looked like a villain in a fairy tale, the one who locked the princess in the tower or fed her poison apples.
“Take your hands off your ears.”
It was self-preservation alone that made me do it, just to avoid the possibility of being beaten to a bloody pulp.
As my whole body recoiled from the sheer size of his, he said, “Who sent you?”
I shook my head because I didn’t know what that meant—who sent me—but the hand on my shoulder moved to grasp my upper arm, so that I had no choice but to sit right there in front of him, still half-curled into myself, while he followed up with, “I don’t believe in coincidences, so I’ll ask one more time: Who sent you? ”
I didn’t have an answer for him.
“Was it Kurobara?” His gaze hardened. “Cadwell?”
Why those names?
Did he know me? Know them ?
The grip on my arm tightened. Under different circumstances, the pressure might have been insubstantial, but if I had to guess, he was pressing down on another unanswered-for bruise, which meant that it hurt . I let out a hiss, retreating with a backward scramble that put me under the elevated hospital bed, where I hunched over to keep from hitting the top of my head. With my pulse beating out of control, I felt almost feral, wanting to run but not knowing where to go.
The door was shut.
The girl was gone.
“What’s your name?” the man asked almost kindly, clearly changing tactics. When I only stared back, giving him nothing, the last of his patience seemed to chip away. “The thing about rescuing an almost dead boy is that I can’t tell you the story that came before—maybe you slipped away from your family, entirely by accident, or maybe you ran away because that was your only option. Do you see my dilemma?” He spread his big hands wide, the gesture as harmless as an emaciated lion bedded down with a herd of gazelles. “I don’t know whether to return you to your family or keep you safe.”
This didn’t feel safe.
My heart was racing, and the hairs on my nape stood on end. Despite every gut instinct screaming that I couldn’t trust him, or this place, I heard myself rasp, “Who are . . . they?”
“Cadwell and Kurobara?”
Something in his tone told me that there was history there. A reason why he doubted my innocence. Like he thought that I was some kind of Trojan horse, washed up on his land to make his life a living hell. But he was wrong. Throat tight, I gave a quick jerk of my head. No, I didn’t know them. I didn’t know any of these people.
“Do you know your name?” he asked again.
The question rattled around in my skull, knocking emotions loose even though no memories shook out.
Didn’t I have a name? Everyone had a name.
Straining for an answer only worsened the high-pitched ringing in my ears, so I dug my thumbs into my temple, praying that everything would just go quiet . It didn’t, because of course it didn’t. Nausea swirled in my belly like a bad omen.
“You don’t remember anything?”
“A boy,” I heard myself say before I even realized that I’d opened my mouth. “I remember . . . a boy.”
I didn’t remember his face or his name, if he’d even given it to me, but I remembered the sensation of being shored up against a lanky frame, of a soft, lulling voice speaking quietly in my ear, of falling to the ground and there never being any loss of patience—just quiet understanding until his arm was back around my waist and mine once again grasped desperately onto him, and then . . . nothing.
Blank space.
The stranger stared at me. I couldn’t read his thoughts, his gaze was that impenetrable, but then his mouth sort of pinched, and he slowly rose to his full height. From where I hid, I couldn’t see anything above his belt buckle, so I watched his shiny shoes as they took him away.
Was he leaving?
What did he plan to do with?—
“Get me Yarik.” The order was given without fanfare to whoever waited in the hall. Then he stood sentry at the door, the questioning he’d put forth lapsing into awkward silence.
I glanced from his legs to the base of the window. I didn’t know what floor we were on, and I didn’t know how extensive my injuries were from being almost dead , but I knew that this place felt off, this stranger felt off, and whether or not he actually planned to keep me safe—all of this felt off .
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
I’d barely gotten one palm on the tiled floor. Technically, I hadn’t done anything. But I heard the subtle edge in his voice and went absolutely still, instinctively knowing better than to aggravate the emaciated lion.
His impatience permeated the air.
“Here, on this land, everything belongs to me. This house, these trees, the fucking air you breathe. If I let you stay, it’s because I have a use for you. If I let you go, I won’t be hunting down your family to give you some happy little reunion. I’ll drop you off at the edge of my land, where you can’t breathe my fucking air, and I’ll send you on your way. Do we understand each other?”
Not safe .
The warning clanged like a bell in my head.
I eyed the window again, debating how far I could get before the stranger took me out—because he would, I knew that now—but then the door cracked open, and a new pair of shoes entered my periphery. These legs were shorter, thinner, the trainers worn with age, the once-white laces now an obscure shade of gray, like the sky beyond the window, like the feeling running rampant in my chest.
Gray like defeat.
Gray like hopelessness.
“Papa, Pavel said you wanted to see me.”
That voice .
I found myself peeking out from under the bed, just to put a face to my only memory. Thin arms holding me up; “You can’t stay here—it’s not safe,” whispered fervently in my ear.
He looked nothing at all like I’d expected.
The voice was soft, even now when addressing his father, but the rest of him spoke of an inner strength that bled through to the surface. His chin was tipped down toward his chest, not in subservience but in quiet revolt—it was there in the way a muscle ticked in his jaw, in the way his fingers furled and unfurled where he kept them laced together at the base of his spine, out of his father’s sight. His blond hair was nearly as white as the girl’s from earlier—siblings, if I had to guess—and the wavy strands fell across a pair of dark blue eyes that glittered with defiance even as he kept them trained on the floor.
“Is this the boy you remember?” the stranger said.
That’s when those blue eyes lifted and found me in my hiding place, tucked away under the bed like a coward. Mortification burned in my cheeks as I scrabbled out, my right knee almost slipping out from under me as I pitched awkwardly to my feet.
I was strangely nervous as I met his gaze. Utterly breathless when I said, “You saved me.”
“He almost killed you,” the stranger scoffed cruelly. And then he clasped his son’s nape the way a bitch would to a newborn pup. Only, the boy—Yarik?—didn’t immediately go pliant under his father’s touch. No, he bristled and bared his teeth, and then the stranger seemed to realize that he had a rebellion on his hands because he shifted his grip downward. Tears suddenly glistened in those dark blue eyes, that lanky frame nearly curling into itself as a choked-off whimper escaped his parted lips.
Something about that—watching all that defiance be snuffed out like a dampened candle wick—made a rush of emotion flood my veins. I didn’t recognize it. Didn’t even understand it. None of that stopped me.
I discovered a small limp on my second step across the room.
On my third, I realized that the ties on my hospital gown had loosened. The thin material gaped in the back as cool air rushed over my skin, bare arse and all. That didn’t stop me either.
I walked right up to Yarik as if our meeting had always been inevitable. He was taller than me. Broader, too. This close, it was easy to see that his skin wasn’t nearly as flawless as it had looked from across the room; freckles spilled across the bridge of his nose and cheekbones. His face was soft in a way that said, one day, when he grew even taller and his body became a junkyard of hardened memories, each of his boyish features would die a quick and brutal death. He had a warrior’s heart. I knew it even though I wasn’t sure how.
If his father was the villain in a fairy tale, then this boy was the prince.
I wasn’t sure what that made me. An interloper, maybe. The cast-off character with a single memorable line but who is otherwise destined to be forgotten.
Guess I’d better make it count, then.
In the span of a single heartbeat, I wrapped myself around Yarik’s rangy body—one arm looped behind his warm neck, the other anchored around his waist, my hands pressed flat against his spine. Even as I held him to me, I heard the way my breathing hitched under a sudden onslaught of panic. I wanted to rip myself out of his arms, wanted to scrub every last place on my body that now carried the memory of his touch. It took every ounce of willpower to keep still.
Could he feel how my heart raced?
Did he even realize that my little maneuver had forced his father to let go?
I met the stranger’s gaze over Yarik’s shoulder. They both had the same dark blue eyes, and I didn’t dare look away, not even when I opened my mouth and murmured against the shell of Yarik’s ear, “Thank you. Thank you for saving me.”
“I couldn’t leave you.” The son’s quiet admission sparked a wildfire in the father’s eyes. “Not like that.”
Before I could respond, Yarik was torn from my hold, the unforgiving grip on the back of his neck forcing his head down as the stranger towed him toward the door, where he was pushed into the hallway. Then the stranger turned back toward me, the irritation in his expression barely leashed by a mask of civility.
I was the almost-dead boy. The boy who’d been dredged from the Thames and saved by a single stroke of luck. There was terror crawling through my veins, sure, but also something that felt suspiciously like dumb bravado. Which had to be the only reason I looked the stranger dead in the eye and said, “Do you feel better about yourself when you push your son around?”
The mask fell away.
In its place was raw, unrelenting fury.
He took a menacing step toward me. “You have until the end of the day. If I find you still on my land?—”
“Breathing your fucking air,” I interjected, throwing his own words back at him, just to see how that fury glimmered.
“—You’ll wish that you’d died in that fucking river.”
And then he was gone.
I glanced at the window and wondered how far the fall was.