Chapter 20 Midnight Gardens
MIDNIGHT GARDENS
VIKTOR
My jacket hung heavy with water and failure. I let it fall. Stood there in shirt and holster while rain soaked through to skin, each drop a small punishment I'd earned a thousand times over.
The cold helped. Made the edges sharp again. Made the world feel real instead of like some nightmare where I kept saving people only to watch them bleed anyway.
My knuckles were split open. Raw. Aching in that way that reminded you that pain was proof of being alive, even when you weren't sure you wanted to be.
“You disappeared.”
His voice cut through the rain. Through the white noise in my head. Through every wall I'd tried to build in the last three hours.
I didn't turn. Couldn't. If I looked at him, if I saw concern in those green eyes, I'd shatter.
“Needed air.”
“Bullshit.” Footsteps through wet grass. No guards. No Apollo. Just Sebastian alone in the dark because he was reckless and stubborn and didn't understand that people who got close to me ended up destroyed. “You needed to run.”
My hands curled. Nails biting into palms. “Am not running.”
“You're standing in a garden at three in the morning, soaked through, looking like you're about to either kill someone or vanish into smoke.” He stopped beside me.
Close enough that I could feel his warmth cutting through the rain.
Close enough to touch but not touching. Giving me space to bolt. “That's running, Viktor.”
I looked at him then. Couldn't help it.
He'd thrown on dark clothes. Jeans. Black shirt that made his eyes look darker, face sharper. Hair plastered to his skull from rain. Beautiful in that way that hurt. Like staring into the sun and knowing you'd go blind but doing it anyway because the alternative was darkness forever.
“You should be in bed,” I said. Voice rough. Foreign.
“So should you.”
“I do not sleep.”
“I know. You prowl the halls like a ghost and pretend it's patrol.” His mouth curved. Sad. Understanding. “I've been watching you, Viktor. You think I haven't noticed?”
Of course he'd noticed. Sebastian noticed everything. Saw through every wall, every lie, every defense I threw up to keep him at a distance that might keep him breathing.
“You should stop watching.” The words tasted like ash. “Nothing good there to see.”
“I'll be the judge of that.”
I looked back at the gardens. At white roses blooming in darkness, petals glowing under moonlight breaking through clouds.
My mother had loved white roses. Said they meant remembrance.
That the dead preferred them because they caught the light, made themselves visible in the dark when everything else disappeared.
I'd planted white roses on Anya's grave with hands that shook so hard I could barely grip the shovel.
“I thought you were hurt,” Sebastian said quietly. “When I couldn't find you. After everything. I thought—” He cut himself off. Swallowed. “I thought you'd left.”
Something in my chest twisted. Sharp. Vicious.
“Would be easier if I had.”
“Don't.” His voice went hard. “Don't do that. Don't make this into something noble. Don't act like disappearing on me would be some kind of mercy.”
“Is not mercy. Is truth.”
“Your truth. Not mine.”
I turned on him then. Let him see whatever was written on my face.
The exhaustion. The fear. The desperate need to protect him from myself.
“You want truth, Sebastian? Fine. Here is truth: I am not good man. I have killed without hesitation. Lied without remorse. Betrayed people who trusted me. Done things that would make you sick if you knew the details.”
“I've seen you fight. I know what you're capable of.”
“You have seen surface.” My voice dropped. Went cold in that way it did when I was trying not to feel. “You have not seen what I have done. What I am still capable of doing.”
“Then show me.”
The challenge hung there. Quiet. Devastating.
“You do not want to see.”
“Try me.”
Rain fell harder. Thunder rolled somewhere over the city, low and warning. Storm coming. Always another storm coming to wash away the blood and leave the guilt intact.
“I did everything right tonight,” I heard myself say. Voice raw. Unfamiliar. “Everything. I checked the routes. Cleared the exits. Mapped the sight lines. Did my job exactly as I was trained.”
“You saved us.”
My laugh came out broken. Bitter. “I keep saving people who do not stay saved.”
“That's not—”
“Fair?” I rounded on him. Everything I'd been holding back for hours, for days, for years suddenly clawed its way up my throat.
“You want to talk about fair? Nothing about this is fair. Nothing about watching you throw yourself into danger night after night while I follow behind trying to catch you before you fall. Nothing about knowing that caring about you makes me weaker. Makes me hesitate. Makes me—”
The words choked off. Blocked by something in my throat that felt like broken glass swallowed whole.
Sebastian stepped closer. Eyes locked on mine. Refusing to flinch. “Makes you what?”
“Makes me human.” The admission tasted like defeat. Like every failure I'd ever swallowed coming back up at once. “And humans fail.”
“Everyone fails, Viktor. That's not—”
“I had a sister.”
The words ripped out. Tore themselves free from the place I'd locked them. The place I'd sealed with violence and discipline and the kind of control that only worked if you never, ever let yourself feel.
Sebastian went still. “What?”
“Sister. Anya.” Her name felt like shrapnel in my mouth. Like speaking it out loud made her real again, made her death real again, made everything I'd failed to do real in a way that sitting with it silently never quite managed. “She was fifteen when they took her.”
The silence stretched. Just rain and my pulse hammering and the weight of a secret I'd carried alone for so long I'd forgotten what it felt like to share the burden.
“Viktor—”
“Do not.” I held up a hand. Couldn't look at him. Couldn't see whatever was about to cross his face. “Do not say you are sorry. Do not look at me with pity. Just. Let me say this before I lose my nerve and bury it again.”
He nodded. Pressed his lips together. Waited.
I looked at the roses. At their pale blooms glowing like bones in moonlight. Easier than looking at him. Easier than seeing understanding or horror or any of the things I deserved to see reflected back.
“I was military. Special forces. Best in my unit.” The words came mechanical.
Rehearsed. Like I was reading from a report instead of bleeding out my worst memory into the rain.
“They wanted me to interrogate a prisoner. Political dissident. Had information about arms smuggling, they said. I refused.”
“Why?”
“Because he was innocent. Because the orders were to make him confess to crimes he did not commit. To break him for propaganda. To turn him into a symbol.” My hands fisted. Knuckles screaming. “I told my commanding officer no. Said I would not torture an innocent man for politics.”
Sebastian didn't move. Barely breathed.
“They did not like that. Did not appreciate me questioning orders. Questioning authority. Questioning the machine.” I swallowed. Tasted copper. “So they found leverage.”
“Anya.”
“Da.” The word cracked. Splintered. “They took her from school. Held her for three days. Sent me videos every six hours showing what they would do to her if I did not cooperate. If I did not become the weapon they needed me to be.”
“What did they do?”
“Everything.” My voice went flat. Dead. The only way to say it without screaming.
“They broke her. Slowly. Methodically. Professional torture disguised as interrogation. Asking her where I was. What I knew. Pretending she had information when all she had was my name and the memory of me promising I would always keep her safe.”
Rain ran down my face. Into my eyes. Blurring the world into watercolor smears that looked like the videos they'd sent. Her face. Her blood. Her screams.
“I tried to find her.” The words came faster now.
Desperate. Like if I said them fast enough they wouldn't hurt as much.
“Tore through every contact. Every source. Called in every favor I had built over years of service. But they moved her. Kept moving her. Always one step ahead because they knew me. Knew how I thought. Knew exactly how to hurt me in ways that would last.”
“Viktor—”
“By the time I found where they were keeping her, it was too late.” The words tasted like ash. Like failure. Like every moment I'd been too slow, too weak, too fucking human to save the one person who mattered. “She was already gone. Not dead. Worse than dead.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“No god in this. Just men with power and a girl who paid for her brother's pride.” I closed my eyes.
Saw her face behind my eyelids. Always her face.
Always that last moment when she'd looked at me and I'd seen that she was already gone.
“They had destroyed her. Broken everything inside that made her Anya. Left her alive because that hurt me more than killing her would have. Because they wanted me to see what happened when people refused to be weapons.”
Sebastian made a sound. Raw. Hurt.
“She overdosed six months later.” The words came quiet now. Final. “Pills. Vodka. Bathroom floor in a hostel where no one knew her name. Where no one found her for three days because she was just another dead girl and the world is full of dead girls no one bothers to save.”
“I'm sorry—”
“I told you not to say that!” The roar came from somewhere animal.
Feral. From the place where I kept everything I couldn't afford to feel.
“Your sorry changes nothing! Brings nobody back! Does not fix the fact that I chose morality over her life! That I stood on principle while they destroyed her! That every day I am alive is a day she is not because I was too fucking proud to break one man who probably deserved it anyway!”
My voice broke.