17. Anya
ANYA
I sleep for most of the day. Not peacefully, but deeply enough that when I wake, the room is bright and unfamiliar, and for a few seconds I forget where I am.
Then I see the dark walls. The heavy curtains. The ring on my finger.
Yaromir’s room.
Our room.
I sit up too quickly, and the memories come back in pieces. Yaromir’s mouth between my thighs. My face burns before I can stop it. I press both hands over my eyes and groan into my palms.
Wonderful.
I’m married to a mafia boss, trapped in his house, and apparently my body has decided this is the perfect time to start becoming a traitor.
A knock comes at the door before I can drown myself in embarrassment.
I pull the blanket up to my chest. “Yes?”
A maid enters with a breakfast tray. She’s middle-aged, neat, and quiet, with her hair pinned back and a face trained not to react. She sets the tray on the small table near the window.
“Good afternoon, madam.”
Afternoon.
Of course. I slept through the morning.
“What time is it?”
“Nearly two.”
I stare at her.
She only adjusts the tray and steps back. There’s tea, black bread, soft cheese, boiled eggs, fruit, honey, and a bowl of warm porridge with berries on top. I don’t want to be impressed.
I am impressed.
“Thank you,” I say.
She inclines her head. “Would you like anything else?”
The correct answer is no.
The honest answer is freedom, my old life back, and maybe a full explanation of why my husband ate me like he hated the idea of me ever thinking about another man and then disappeared for the entire day.
I say, “No, thank you.”
She leaves.
I eat everything. That’s the first embarrassing thing.
The second is how much I enjoy it.
After days of cheap food, cold leftovers, and stolen bites during kitchen breaks at Misha’s, the breakfast feels almost indecent. The tea is strong. The bread is fresh. The honey tastes like something from a life where people are not threatened, sold, or married for revenge.
For fifteen minutes, I’m almost happy.
Then another maid comes in. This one is younger, maybe my age, with a measuring tape around her neck and a notebook in her hand.
“Madam, I need your measurements.”
I lower my teacup. “For what?”
“Dresses.”
“Dresses?”
“For your wardrobe.”
I look down at myself.
I’m wearing the robe I found in Yaromir’s room. Under it, the nightdress from last night. My own clothes are either missing, ruined, cheap, or still folded in a small bag somewhere in this house.
“I already have clothes.”
The maid looks at me with careful politeness.
No, she does not say. But her face does.
I stand. “Can’t I go out and get them myself?”
She looks down at her notebook. That’s answer enough.
I laugh once, not because it is funny.
“I see.”
“Madam, if you would please stand straight.”
I want to refuse. But refusing a measuring tape feels childish after everything else I’ve survived, so I stand in the middle of the bedroom while she measures my shoulders, waist, bust, hips, arm length, hem length. She’s efficient and respectful, which somehow makes the whole thing more annoying.
No one says I’m locked in. No one says I can’t leave. They simply avoid answering when I ask.
When she finishes, she gathers her things.
“How long will it take?”
“Some items can be sent today. Others tomorrow.”
“And if I want to go outside?”
She pauses at the door. “Outside the room?”
“Outside the house.”
Another pause. “I can ask.”
“Ask who?”
She doesn’t answer.
Of course.
Yaromir. The invisible answer to everything in this house.
After she leaves, I spend another hour trying not to be angry.
It doesn’t work.
I bathe. I brush my hair. I put on the least offensive dress left for me in the wardrobe, a plain dark blue one that fits well enough to make me wonder who guessed my size before the maid came.
I walk around the room. I open drawers. I look at books I don’t read.
I stare out the window at the estate grounds until my eyes ache.
No Yaromir.
Last night, he was everywhere. His hands, his mouth, his voice, his eyes watching every reaction I tried to hide.
Today, he’s gone.
I tell myself I’m relieved.
I am not.
By late afternoon, boredom turns into irritation, and irritation turns into something worse. I’m not staying in this room like some decorative prisoner. If Yaromir wants me kept indoors, he can come upstairs and say it to my face.
I leave.
No one stops me. That’s the strange thing.
The hallway is quiet. A guard at the far end glances at me, then looks away. A maid carrying folded sheets dips her head and continues walking. The house seems to know I’m moving through it, but no one challenges me.
Maybe that is worse.
A cage doesn’t need bars if everyone inside already knows where the walls are.
I walk down the staircase slowly, pretending I know where I’m going.
I don’t.
The estate is larger than it looked during the rushed tour.
Corridors branch into other corridors. Some rooms are open and cold, others closed.
I pass the library, the formal sitting room, a narrow gallery filled with old paintings, and a sunroom full of plants that look like the only soft things in the house.
Eventually, I find a side door. It opens into the garden.
For the first time all day, I breathe properly. The air is cold, but clean. The sky is pale gray. The grounds stretch out around the house, all stone paths, dark trees, and patches of winter grass. In the distance, beyond a line of hedges, I see a long low building with a sloped roof.
Stables.
I hesitate. Then I remember Alexei’s story at lunch.
The terrible horse. The one Yaromir kept because it had spirit.
A stupid part of me smiles.
So I walk toward it.
The stable smells of hay, leather, and animals. It’s warmer inside than I expect, with golden light falling through high windows and dust moving slowly in the air. A man near the far stall looks up when I enter. He’s older, broad, with a gray beard and sleeves rolled to his elbows.
His eyes widen slightly when he sees me. “Madam.”
The title still feels strange.
“I’m just looking,” I say.
He wipes his hands on a cloth. “Of course.”
He watches me like he wants to stop me but values his life too much to try.
I move slowly past the stalls. Most of the horses are beautiful in the expected way. Glossy coats. Calm eyes. Expensive bodies. They glance at me, uninterested, then return to eating.
Then I reach the last stall.
The horse inside lifts his head. He is huge. Black, except for a jagged white mark running down the front of his face. His mane is thick and slightly tangled, and one ear flicks back immediately, as if he has already decided he dislikes me.
I stop.
The horse stares at me. I stare back.
“This is him, isn’t it?” I ask.
The stableman appears beside me, careful to keep a respectful distance. “If you mean the devil with hooves, yes.”
I almost laugh. “The one who bites people?”
“And kicks. And breaks fences. And hates music, dogs, umbrellas, loud men, quiet men, and anyone wearing red.”
“What’s his name?”
“Buran.”
Storm.
Of course.
Buran snorts, stamping one hoof against the straw.
“He sounds charming,” I say.
The stableman gives me a look. “He’s not.”
I step a little closer to the door.
The stableman stiffens. “Madam, I would not.”
“I’m not going in.”
“Good.”
Buran lowers his head slightly, dark eyes fixed on me. There’s something almost rude in his attention. Like he’s judging me and finding me lacking.
I understand him immediately. “You’re the ugly horse,” I tell him.
The stableman makes a strangled sound. “Madam.”
But Buran only flicks one ear.
“I was told you were terrible,” I continue.
The horse exhales hard through his nose.
I fold my arms. “Yes, I know the feeling.”
Here is a creature no one has polished into obedience. No one has taught him to smile, lower his eyes, accept the bit, and be grateful for shelter. He’s difficult, dangerous, inconvenient. The exact opposite of me.
I stand there longer than I mean to, watching the horse watch me.
Then a voice comes from behind me.
“You found Buran.”
I turn.
Yaromir stands at the stable entrance, dressed in black as usual, his coat open, silver threaded through his dark hair. He looks like he belongs in the doorway of every dangerous place.
“You disappeared,” I say.
His eyes move over me once. “You were sleeping.”
“All day?”
“You needed it.”
“And after I woke?”
“I had work.”
Of course.
I turn back to the horse because looking at Yaromir makes it harder to stay irritated.
Yaromir comes closer. Buran’s ears flatten for a second, then relax. Interesting.
“He also bit Alexei,” Yaromir says.
“That improves my opinion of him.”
A faint movement touches Yaromir’s mouth. Almost a smile. Then it disappears, and the distance from earlier returns.
I hate that I notice.
I look at Buran. “Can I touch him?”
“No.” The answer is immediate.
I glance at Yaromir. “You didn’t even think about it.”
“I did. The answer is no.”
“He seems calm.”
“He isn’t.”
“Neither are you.”
The stableman suddenly finds something urgent to do at the other end of the stable.
Yaromir steps closer to me, lowering his voice. “Do not put your hand near him.”
“Is that an order?”
“Yes.”
I should be angry.
I am.
But under it, there’s something else. Something restless and reckless that has been growing since I woke up alone in his bed.
“You can’t keep everyone away from me,” I say.
“I can keep you away from animals that break fingers.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
We stand beside the stall, close enough that I can smell him again. Clean smoke. Leather. Cold air. Last night rushes back so quickly my breath catches.
His mouth on me. My hands in his hair. The way he left.
His eyes drop briefly to my mouth.
So he remembers too.
Good. I want him to.
I want him to suffer a little with it.
“Your maid measured me for dresses,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Can’t I go out and get them myself?”
“No. But we are going out tonight.”
That stops me. “What?”
“Tonight,” he says. “You and I.”