Chapter 3
THREE
GWENNA
The reception room has lemon-chiffon yellow walls, arched white ceilings, and a curlicued, cream-colored mantel above a fireplace that’s never lit.
Relaxing.
Or it should be, anyway. I can feel the stares of the other girls radiating through the glass panels of the door that separates us from the dayroom.
“This is…” Moroslav—Alexei? I don’t even know what to call him—takes it all in, his expression studiously blank. “Nice,” he finishes.
“You don’t have to lie,” I say, surprising myself with my bluntness even as my heart is hammering in my ribs. My hands are clutching the edges of my chair, and I’m looking everywhere and nowhere at once until, at last, I steal a glance at the man sitting across from me.
Tall, broad-shouldered but slender. Almost wiry. Dark waves of hair, ivory skin, angular face. Dressed, under his greatcoat, in a deep red button-down. And again, the cross necklace at his throat.
Suddenly, I remember what I look like. Bare-faced, hair barely brushed, wearing institutional clothes.
What am I doing here?
I shouldn’t care what I look like. I shouldn’t have even come out to see him, probably. What was I thinking? What’s wrong with me?
Then, Jessie the therapist’s words echo in my mind.
You look…lonely.
She’s right; I must be that desperate for human company. For…male company.
A giggle sounds behind us. The rest of the girls staring us down certainly are.
Not like I can blame them. It’s rare to get a visitor who isn’t a tight-lipped mother or stony-faced father. The few boyfriends that do drop in are nothing like this. Nothing like…
I must be staring, because Moroslav’s black-brown eyes drift to the nearest window.
“A hard winter we’re having,” he says, nodding to the sludgy snow and leaden sky outside. “Reminds me of home.” He chuckles.
“I…bet,” I say, tentative. His hands are folded on the table, like he wants to obey all the rules, and he’s leaning in just enough to make me grip the sides of my chair a little harder. “Surely you didn’t…come here to talk about the weather,” I venture.
“Ah! No. I am so rude. Here.” He pushes something across the table—a package, I see,
“Not just these. An apology.” He ducks his head again. “Miss Gwenna. What I said to you, so many weeks ago—it was wrong.”
Thump. I startle in my seat, and look back at the door to the dayroom to see Miri with one hand flat against the glass, the other pumping back and forth in a mimed jerk-off gesture. I cringe a little, even as a counselor bustles over to shoo her away.
“Sorry,” I say, not sure why it’s my fault but feeling the impulse to apologize nevertheless. “It’s…you were saying?”
“No worries.” Moroslav smiles, and it brings just enough warmth to his features to make me relax. “I should not have said it to you. I was angry to lose the match. I lost my temper, and…”
Abruptly, he pulls back, swipes through the air like he’s starting fresh.
“No, no. I misspeak. That is not all.” He bites his lip and looks at me. “I pride myself that I do not speak like that to women. And yet here, with you, I have. I cannot forgive myself, still.”
I blink, trying to process the…everything of what he’s just said.
It’s not that I don’t believe that he’s sorry.
I do, I think. It’s more that…he’s thought about this a lot, from the sounds of it.
Probably more than I have, given everything else that went on to happen to me that night.
Something about this, him, here, feels…disproportionate.
“So you track me down here just to say you’re sorry?”
Another smile. This one broader. “Believe it or not, we care a great deal for women. Especially ones like yourself.” The faintest flush spreads over his cheeks, and he breaks his gaze with me. Like he needs to compose himself.
And I can’t help it; I blush a little too.
“Here.” Moroslav snaps back to sitting straight, opens the package, and pushes it another inch towards me. “You try some, yes? Forgive me, but…the food here cannot be so good as you’d like.”
He isn’t wrong. And, peering inside the metal tin, the plump little kulichi look extraordinarily tempting, butter-yellow in the center with fluted edges and some kind of intricate design pressed into the top.
No, not a design.
I frown.
Letters.
IC XC
NIKA.
Could be Cyrillic. But…no, that’s Greek. Something to the effect of Jesus Christ conquers.
Moroslav looks up from the breads to me, his brows slightly drawn. Then he relaxes, lips parting in realization.
“Ah, yes. Traditionally for Pascha—Easter. So…” He shrugs.
“But I did not want to wait so long to bring to you.” With that, he reaches into the tin and pulls out a kulich, which he breaks in two and hands one half to me.
“Za zdoróvye zemlí.” He lifts his half in a toast and takes a bite.
“See? No poison.” He swallows, and draws a cross over his chest with two fingers. “Swear to God.”
I hadn’t even considered that it would be poisoned. But now I suppose it’s…definitely not.
The bread is still warm in my hands. All I’ve had today is some glue-like oatmeal and a lukewarm cup of Italian wedding soup. It feels like just the thing you should be having on a dank, gloomy snowy day.
I take a bite.
Moroslav leans in, eyebrows raised. “And?”
I chew, covering my mouth with my hand. “S’good,” I manage, almost choking.
It is good. Rich and dense and heavily sweet.
And I feel…better.
Warm.
More…alive, somehow. If that’s possible. Like I can feel the color as it creeps back into my cheeks.
All the while, Moroslav is watching me, as carefully and intently as if he’s going to grade my performance. But gradually, he smiles. Grins, really.
“See?” He says, shaking a finger at me. “See? I knew she would do well with it.” He laughs, surprisingly loud. “I knew it.”
Knock knock. Again, I jump at the sound behind me, but this time it’s not one of my peers here to gesture lewdly at my visitor, but Grace, one of the counselors.
“Five minutes ’til group, Gwenna,” she says. “Might want to say your goodbyes.”
I nod, and look back across the table. Moroslav’s hands are folded again, his gaze casting around the room, taking it all in. “You stay here how long?”
“You mean…how long have I been here?” I ask. “Or how much longer am I staying?”
He looks back at me with a bashful smile, shaking a gentle finger at me. “The verb tenses! Always get me. You will be here how much longer, I mean to ask.”
“I…”
I don’t really have an answer.
There really isn’t an answer.
And maybe it’s the warmth in my body from the bite of kulich, maybe it’s session with Jessie earlier today, maybe it’s the shakeup to what has been a mind-and-body-numbing routine of gray day after gray day, but a single thought reverberates in my mind:
What if I just left?
No one could stop me. I’m over eighteen. There’s no involuntary hold on me; it wouldn’t even be against medical advice, not if what Jessie the therapist told me is really true. I could just march over to the sign-in desk, tell Linda the receptionist I’m withdrawing, and…
…and what? Call an Uber? Hitch a ride with a Russian fencer I barely know?
The excitement fades as swiftly as it rushed in. Am I stupid? I have no money, no useful, employable skills.
I have nowhere else to go.
“I ask because.” Moroslav’s voice is lower now, richer, and he’s leaned in so close I have to lean in towards him, too, to hear it. “I would like to see you again, Gwenna.”
His words ring in my ears. I’m so taken aback that I can’t even process a response.
And I don’t have to.
The door bangs—the front door, the entrance door, and figures spill into the reception room in a tumult.
“Get,” grits a low voice, “away from her.”
Kingston.
The floor might as well have dropped out from under me. I’m dizzy, reeling, stunned and shocked and electrically overwhelmed to see him here—to see all of them here, I realize: Kai and Lanz and Callahan
Moroslav doesn’t get up. Doesn’t even turn to face them, really, just angles his head backwards, smirks.
“Well.” His glance flashes back to me. “What a party you have going here.”
Knock knock. “Gwenna?” Grace’s voice comes. “We’re—oh, my God.”
I swivel around to see Grace frozen in place, a look of panic on her face as one hand flies to cover her open mouth.
“Wait,” I say, somehow jumping to my feet. “Grace. It’s…they’re…”
I don’t even know how to explain, know what I’m trying to explain beyond the immediately visible: four furious young men in long dark coats standing shoulder-to-shoulder like a black wall, staring down a fifth who’s all but snarling at them.
“Get away from her,” Kingston repeats, his voice tighter this time. Now, Moroslav gets to his feet, slowly, eyes locked on Kingston’s.
“As you are so proud of,” he says slowly, “it is a free country.” He darts a look back at me. “Me, I am just visiting an acquaintance. To apologize for how I treated her. To do the…what do you call it?” His eyes flash. “The chivalrous thing.”
Kingston flies.
He tackles Moroslav so fast I hear the thud before I process what I’m seeing, Kingston landing hard on top, his broad left hand spanning Moroslav’s throat as his right wheels back.
Crack.
The punch lands, and someone screams.
Me. I’m screaming.
And now Kai and Callahan are ripping Kingston back, yanking him to standing, throwing their arms across his chest as he fruitlessly tries to shrug them off, his golden eyes fixed on Moroslav.
“Leave,” he says. “Now.”
“Gladly.” Another grin crawls over Moroslav’s face, too wide, as he stands. “I have seen who I came to see.”
With that, he shoulders his way between Kingston and Cal, and shoves the door open, just as—
“Security!” someone yells. Grace. Behind me. “Security!”
I whirl around again just in time to see her slam her hand on the red panic button that stands beside all the doors at Renfrew.
“No!” My voice is ragged, my eyes wet—I’m crying, I’m crying because I’m so overwhelmed and because I don’t want the four of them to be here, to be here and to see me like this, and a security alarm on top of all that is just going to draw every girl out of the dayroom and dorms and group and—
Sure enough, voices and footsteps ring out behind Grace, the dayroom flooding with girls and orderlies and therapists—
“No,” I moan. “No, no…”
“Code Gray,” yells a voice. “She’s hysterical.”
Someone strong grabs my shoulders from behind as I choke on a sob. “No! Let me—”
I don’t even see the needle. Only feel the world slip away.