Chapter Eleven
Iris
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
It had taken me a few days to actually work up the courage to return to this room. Days that were spent sleeping in brief spurts on couches or floors when I could find breaks between long hours spent planning and strategizing with Clay and Kent.
I wasn’t sure why I’d been nervous to step back inside these four walls. Was it fear that things would be noticeably different despite Nikolai’s assurance that everything was just as I had left it? Or was I more afraid that he had spoken the truth and the room was untouched?
Either way, Nikolai hadn’t been exaggerating. It was all identical to the room that was permanently etched in my memories. From the positioning of the flickering candelabras to every gown, jewel, and hairpin. Gods, it was even dusty in some places.
Absentmindedly, I chewed on my lower lip and thought back to that first mission with the Order. Nikolai had never been part of the plan. Our relationship was never supposed to have happened.
And when I left him? I had never planned to return.
“Care for a drink?”
I glanced over my shoulder to see Nikolai staring at me from where he leaned against the doorframe of the room, a playful smirk on his face. That smirk hadn’t changed after all this time either.
“Was that your attempt to startle me?” I deadpanned. It would take a lot more than that to scare me these days.
He prowled forward, his body the same mass of smooth, masculine domination that I remembered so well. I kept my face neutral, refusing to show the slightest reaction to him.
Nikolai Legum liked to live inside illusions, too.
I might change my face and hair color, but he maintained this elaborate estate, kept his clothes tailored and his copper hair cleanly tied back to hide that darkness in him.
He hid behind teasing grins and polite table manners, but I knew better than anyone how vicious he could be.
“Why would I want to scare you, bird?” he asked, reaching out to tuck a strand of wavy russet hair behind my ear. His eyes tracked the movement. “I must admit, this has become somewhat of my favorite part of the day.”
“What has?”
Hazel eyes met mine with burning intensity. “Seeing what appearance you will choose.”
I pinched my lips together, ignoring the urge to step back and put space between us. “Having only one hair color can be so boring.”
His lips quirked into a grin. “Perhaps. It’s not just the hair that changes, though.”
His grin widened when I shivered against the sensation of his index finger trailing down the line of my collarbone to rest on the right side of my chest, just an inch above the neckline of my vest. Slowly, he tapped his finger three times against my skin.
“This freckle, for example, wasn’t there yesterday. ”
I swallowed, even as I turned away from him dismissively and made my way into the closet of the room.
Gods, it might have been the most beautiful space in all the realm.
A small whimper escaped as I stared at it all. Necklaces of emerald and diamond. Tiaras. Rings. Earrings. Gowns of shimmering silk and elaborate lace.
It was a damn shame I couldn’t keep a single one.
I went to the drawers first, pilfering through them and pulling out anything that could be remotely of value.
“Do you have nothing better to do than memorize my freckles?” I remarked over my shoulder as an icy shiver traveled down my spine when I thought about how much attention he had to be paying to me to notice such details.
“You’re my wife, of course I think about you.”
I scoffed aloud, both at the casual way he said it and the ridiculousness of the statement.
With a fortifying breath, I gathered as many of the gowns in my arms that I could carry and walked past him to dump them on the bed next to the chest I planned to pack them away in.
“I am not your wife.”
He watched as I worked, neither protesting nor offering to help as I continued traveling back and forth from the closet to the chest.
“Not legally,” he admitted with a tilt of his head. “Although that’s easy enough to rectify.”
I glared at him as I passed by, this time with those damn tiaras stacked in my arms.
He’d, admittedly, gone a little over the top with the tiaras. Everything else was beautiful, but these? These were tacky.
“Nikolai, we have enough to worry about right now without diving into whatever history may or may not exist between us.”
“I disagree with—”
I continued, barely stopping to breathe as the words poured out.
“After all, you hardly know me. Not really. You know nothing about my family or my childhood. You’ve never even spent a single night in the same bed with me.
Not to mention it’s been a year since we last saw each other, and I don’t know how you spent your last year, but mine was unexplainably awful.
The kind of awful that makes it so that I never want to deal with another romantic entanglement for the rest of my life. ”
The chest was soon filled, and I pulled a second from under the bed.
“Besides,” I grunted against the weight, and he bent to help me lift it onto the bed.
“I don’t know how you’re even joking about something like that at a time like this.
The entire realm is falling apart, and it’s up to us to somehow save literally everyone and everything.
All of my thoughts pretty constantly rotate between being angry at Thea for a myriad of reasons, being angry at Clay for an entirely separate set of reasons, considering murdering Camilla for one very clear, deserved reason, and trying to plan out the next five things I need to do to keep everyone safe.
So, with all that being said, if we could just focus on the tasks at hand, I would greatly appreciate that. ”
I finished in a huff, throwing my hands on my hips and gasping for air.
Nikolai only stared at me, the corner of his mouth twitching like he wanted to grin.
“Do you always ramble like that?”
I narrowed my eyes at him as I sighed, frustrated that he hadn’t seemed to actually listen to anything I’d just said.
“I used to do it more,” I confessed, hands falling to my hips. “The Order tried to beat it out of me during my training and then…”
My voice trailed off, unable to carry on with that particular lie.
It wasn’t the Order that had caused this heaviness inside of me that seemed to dull any sense of personality that had remained after I’d allowed myself to be turned into a killer.
It was the loss of Lorelai.
Nikolai must have seen the shadow that cast itself over my features because he fell silent as he moved to sit on the bed, folding his hands in his lap as he watched me begin carrying out jewelry.
“Not that one,” he insisted, his hand seizing mine, when I moved to place the jewels inside the chest.
That damn ruby necklace was in my fingertips.
“I just said—”
He pulled it from my grasp. “I heard you. This one is still special to me, little bird.”
Words escaped me as he took the necklace and folded it inside his jacket pocket. I didn’t bother protesting.
“Do you want to talk about it?” He asked softly when I turned away and forced myself to focus on the task once more.
“Talk about what?”
“About who hurt you?”
My hands stilled as I reached to close the lid.
It was a complicated question, one with many answers.
Camilla had hurt me when she betrayed us all, attacked Thea, and killed Lorelai.
Thea had hurt me when she’d disregarded our friendship and freed Camilla.
Clay, Kent, Rankor, and Elaina had all hurt me when they’d seemingly accepted Camilla back into their ranks despite what she’d done.
And…
Well, and Lorelai had hurt me, too.
Lorelai had broken me by dying.
She had broken me into so many tiny pieces that even a treasure hunter like Nikolai Legum wouldn’t be able to find them all and piece me back together.
I slammed the chest shut, latching the hooks and pushing it towards Nikolai.
“No, I don’t,” I hissed, before turning on my heels. “Find someone to sell those to.”
His fingertips wrapped around my wrist, pulling me back towards him. Instinct had my elbow flying towards his jaw, but he easily caught it and forced me to turn and meet his hazel eyes.
His eyes really were something worth marveling at.
There were a myriad of colors in those eyes. Sometimes they were pure green. Other times they were cracked with golden streaks. Now, I was staring into pure honey.
They were captivating.
And entirely not what I needed to be focusing on.
“We can spend our time discussing plans and strategizing battles for now,” he told me, peering at me through a fan of dark lashes.
“But eventually the time will come when you’re ready to let me back in.
And when that time comes, you can tell me all about the past year.
Tell me about your childhood, then, too.
Tell me anything you wish, so long as you’re telling me about the real you. ”
His meaning was clear.
Nikolai didn’t want the version of me I showed my friends. He didn’t care for the happy, free-spirited friend always willing to dance and laugh.
He also didn’t want the killer I let the Order turn me into.h
He wanted us both. He wanted it all. He wanted the truth.
I swallowed, ignoring the familiar scent of him even as I felt his touch like a scorch of fire against my skin.
His tongue darted over his lower lip, and he rose to his feet, standing a foot taller than me. A shadow of stubble painted his carved jawline, and I had the sudden urge to run my lips along the line of it.
The pang of longing hit me so unexpectedly that I stumbled backwards.
I hadn’t allowed myself to feel that for some time.
“I need your resources to win the war,” I insisted. “That is the only reason I’m here.”
His gaze crested down my face. “That is the reason you came. It will not be the reason you eventually choose to stay, my bird.”
He sidestepped me before I could protest again, clapping his hands together before easily lifting the enormous chest I had packed full.
“I know just the place to offload this,” he told me as he turned towards the door. “Then, you and I can be on our way to procure the additional blades.”
“I’m not coming with you, Nikolai!” I followed him down the hallway. “Whatever imagination you have about a romantic adventure is only that. A delusion.”
He stopped short, forcing me to stumble two steps backward as he turned to face me, his expression burning with seriousness and unspoken words.
“You are coming with me, bird, and if you find our adventure romantic, then I will happily enjoy any second you give me between your perfect thighs. Make no mistake, though, you are coming not because of my delusions of us, but because I know better than anyone how positively deadly you are. You are the only one I want watching my back while we try to steal some of the most prized weapons in all the realm.”