5. Alexei #2
He studies me for a long moment, eyes narrowing in that way that means he’s picking apart every emotion on my face.
“Yes, she is. And as your wife, you should be honest with her. Tell her what we know. Don’t you remember, shortly after she arrived in Zurdonia, she told you that she wouldn’t tolerate secrets? ”
“Then she shouldn’t be keeping secrets of her own.” I match my tone with the disappointment he directed at me mere moments before.
His brows knit. “What do you mean? What secrets is she keeping?”
I rub a hand over my face, blowing out a hard breath. “I’m certain she saw more than she let on when she came to the cells to use her abilities.”
Dad lets out a humorless laugh, shaking his head.
“You two really are a match made in heaven.” Then his voice softens.
“Heed my warning, son: trying to handle these matters on your own will only make things worse. Both of you were lucky to make it back last time, and not without serious scars. I will not lose my son or daughter to something preventable.”
His words strike the oldest wound in me.
My mind drags me back—uninvited—to the snow, the night everything almost ended.
Elena’s blood had seeped through her coat faster than my hands could apply pressure.
Too much blood. Too fast. Hot crimson pooling against white ice.
Her breaths shallow, thinning, until a faint rattle replaced them, a sound that haunts my sleep, that I hear in the quiet moments when she’s too far from my reach.
The worst part wasn’t the blood. It wasn’t the shouting, or the chaos, or the orders to secure the space around us.
It was when her hand… stopped squeezing mine.
When her eyes slid shut, lashes fluttering before finally stilling. I ordered her to stay awake. Begged. Demanded. Threatened. Nothing worked. Her pulse had been so weak the medic prepared me… prepared me to say goodbye.
Goodbye.
Even now, heat prickles behind my eyes. That memory is ice in my veins. I’ve never been afraid of much, not dying, not facing an army of armed rebels, not stepping between danger and those I’ve sworn to protect.
But the fear of losing her?
I can’t compute that. I can’t breathe through it.
She’s the warmth in every cold corner of my life, the good people strive to be, the reason I stopped merely existing as a soldier and started living as a man, partner, worthy of her trust and love.
That fear—the memory of almost losing her—is what compels this irrational need to handle everything alone. It’s what I was trained for, what the stone gifted me powers to do.
“You won’t lose me,” I finally say, breaking the heavy silence.
Dad shakes his head, as if I’ve completely missed the point. “There is more than one way to lose someone, son.”
Something twists hard in my chest. “What does that mean?”
Dad’s expression changes; pain and regret mix into something I rarely see on him. “Did I ever tell you the story about your mother almost leaving me after two years of marriage?”
The words strike like a blow. “Mom almost left you?”
He nods once. “We had just started talking about having a family, about trying. It was right after David took the crown. A few months into his reign, there was an assassination attempt.”
I shake my head. “There was nothing in the files.”
“Because David ordered me not to record it. He feared that if the people learned, so soon after the former king and queen died, there would be unrest. David wasn’t close to marriage, no heir… things were fragile.”
“Was King David injured?”
Dad shakes his head. “No. I was.”
A pulse of anger and protectiveness flares inside me. “What happened?” My voice comes out like a snap.
“I was stabbed,” he answers matter-of-factly.
My stomach drops. That should not be news.
He’s my father; I should have known. But thinking about it now…
I don’t ever recall seeing him shirtless.
Ever. Not once. Even training, it was always in wetsuits in the cold Zurdonia climate.
Any moment, it might have been visible; either I missed it, or he hid it well.
“I kept David’s secret… as long as he kept mine,” Dad continues, sighing. “He told your mother my absence was due to a last-minute trip until I was well enough to leave the hospital.”
I scoff. “Did you really think Mom wouldn’t notice a healing stab wound? Where were you stabbed?”
For the first time in a very long time, Dad unbuttons his shirt, pulling the fabric aside to reveal a puckered scar, a line beneath his sternum, one hauntingly similar to Elena’s.
“I was stupid to think I could keep it from her,” he says, rebuttoning slowly.
“I thought I was protecting her by not telling her. That she’d worry less.
But when she found out, she ripped into me.
And she was right. We were partners. She reminded me of the vows we made, through good and bad.
She told me that if I wasn’t willing to trust her…
if I couldn’t respect her enough to share the hard things…
then no matter how much she loved me, she couldn’t stay. ”
A vice closes around my heart.
I can’t imagine Elena saying those words to me.
I simply don’t ever want to think of her walking away.
“She left for a week after that,” Dad continues, quietly.
“Said I had one week to think long and hard about what I wanted, if I could give her what she needed. It took barely a second after she walked out the door for me to realize I might’ve just lost the best thing that had ever happened to me.
” He exhales, a pained sound. “I swore I would never make that mistake again.”
I swallow hard. “Mom was a remarkable woman.”
Dad’s expression softens, a wistful smile touching his face.
“Yes. She was. And so is Elena.” He waits until I meet his eyes.
“Don’t give her a reason to walk away like I gave your mother.
The stab wound healed. The scar remains…
but the pain I caused her, that week without her, that’s a scar that never will. ”