36. Elena #2
“I told you,” she marvels, voice smooth with satisfaction, “that you coming here willingly would be inevitable.”
“Our people have suffered enough,” I answer.
The calm in my voice feels foreign. Manufactured. A thin layer stretched tight over something volatile and clawing beneath my ribs.
“I warned you,” Wendell cuts in, his tone edged with reprimand, “that their suffering was always within your control.”
My eyes narrow.
Oksana slips her hand from his like the contact no longer interests her. Her attention drifts back to me, then down to the pendant resting against my chest. Then past me. To the roses.
“You like them?” she asks.
The question lands wrong. Too soft. Too casual.
I follow her gaze despite myself, the blooms still perfect, still impossibly vibrant against everything else that feels rotten and wrong.
“I was wondering,” I say, voice rougher now, “how something so beautiful could grow surrounded by so much evil.”
Her eyes return to mine. “Anything can bloom,” she replies, “with enough attention… and care.”
My jaw tightens. “I’m not here for games. What is this place?” I hear my own voice ask, sharper now, less controlled.
Her lips curve. “The place where it all began.” Her arms lift slightly, gesturing to everything, the house, the grounds, the air itself. “This,” she adds, “is home.”
A hollow laugh scrapes out of me. “Home? This is anything but.”
Her fingers snap. The sound cracks through the tension like a whip.
Behind us, the guard murmurs into his cuff, voice low and urgent. Seconds later, the french doors open. Two more men step out, dressed the same, moving with that same rigid precision.
The second one carries something.
Gold catches the light first.
A frame.
Large. Ornate. Heavy enough that it should slow him down, but it doesn’t. He holds it with an air of importance. Fragile enough that if he were to move a finger, it would slip and break.
Whatever it is…it’s important to Oksana.
They stop behind her. Holding still, silent as expected, and waiting for their next command.
Oksana snaps her fingers again, the sound cracking through the space between us.
The man steps forward, turning the frame toward us with careful hands.
I don’t see it right away. Because something hits me first.
A flash?—
Sharp. Violent.
It slams behind my eyes, knocks the air from my lungs. It hasn’t happened this abruptly since the first time my visions returned. My breath stutters, chest tightening as something old and buried claws its way up…and then it’s gone.
I’m back. Here. Now.
Alexei’s fingers brush mine. Barely. But it’s enough to ground me.
Whatever it was, he felt it too. Saw it. He always does. Nothing slips past him, not even the ghosts that still live in my head.
“I thought you might like this,” Oksana purrs.
The frame tilts fully toward us, and I see it.
Two girls. Frozen in time. Smiling. The image clear and unblurred. Her. And…my chest tightens.
My mother.
The world doesn’t tilt. I don’t stagger. I don’t give her the satisfaction of seeing anything crack across my face.
But I feel it. I can feel her eyes on me, searching for the reaction I refuse to give.
Then, I catch it. A flicker of annoyance.
Good.
“Why keep it?” I ask, the words slipping out before I can stop them. “When you clearly did everything you could to escape your family?”
The sound she makes is ugly, half laugh, half scoff. “You think,” she scorns, a bite slicing through every word, “that what we were was a family?”
My gaze flicks to the photo, then back to her. “The photo. The roses. All of this.” I gesture slightly. “Why go through the trouble if it’s not?”
Something in her body shifts. It’s small, but real. A crack. “You stole something from me,” she claims, her words cold and precise.
Alexei speaks for the first time, his voice cutting clean through the tension. “Ivan?”
Her attention snaps to him. Slowly. Her tongue drags across her teeth.
Something in me coils tight.
“I see why she likes you,” she murmurs, gaze glinting. “Not only pretty to look at… but observant.”
My jaw locks. “When you’re done,” I cut in, my words sharp and final.
Her eyes return to mine. “Not in the way you’re thinking,” she remarks lightly, then flicks her fingers. The guard retreats with the frame without another word.
“You want revenge,” I press. “That’s obvious. So why all of this? Why align yourself with him?”
“Him?” Wendell snarls, stepping forward.
Alexei moves at the same time.
The distance between them doesn’t change, but the air does. It tightens, sharpens, turns volatile. The guards shift in unison, mirroring him with trained precision that feels far too familiar.
“You forget,” Wendell spits, eyes locking onto Alexei, “only one of us has true royal blood. Only one of us belongs on that throne.” His lip curls. “A half-breed pretending otherwise is… disgusting.”
“I promise,” Alexei interjects, steady as stone, “you’ll never see it again.”
Wendell exhales a harsh laugh. “Careful with promises you can’t keep.” His gaze flicks to me, then back. “You were dangerous once, Novak,” he concedes. “Not anymore. The Markovas already took what was ours from the Popova’s.” His voice drops. “I’ll take it back.”
“Yes,” Oksana cuts in smoothly. “Later.”
She regards him with a stare and holds it.
I turn to Alexei at the same moment he glimpses at me. He sees it too. The brief hesitation. Wendell’s resistance. The smallest shake of his head before he stills.
“It seems,” she resumes, drawing our attention back, “you’ve taken something from both of us.” Her gaze sharpens. “But long before you… It was Alyssa who ruined everything.”
My chest tightens. “Because she defied her father?”
Her brows lift with an almost amused expression. “Father?” she echoes. “No. The moment she was born.”
The realization doesn’t creep in. It slams into me. This was never about Alexei and me. Not really. This goes deeper. Older. Rooted in something that existed long before I ever took my first breath.
I can hear it in her voice. See it in the way her composure fractures, not completely, but enough.
“The things that haunted your nightmares,” she continues, “would look tame standing next to my father.”
A chill slides down my spine.
“What does hating my mother have to do with me?” I ask. “I never did anything to you.”
“On the contrary,” she counters softly, venom laced through every syllable. “I’ve waited years to see Ivan again. To prove myself.” Her eyes narrow. “And like my dear sister… her brat ruins everything.”
Alexei shifts closer. Subtle and protective. Always ready.
“From the moment she was born,” Oksana scorns, her voice twisting, “nothing else mattered.”
There’s something different now. She isn’t fueled only by anger. She tries to hide it, but there is something deep inside of her that aches.
“She was barely walking,” her voice cuts in, glancing toward the roses, “and already she was better. Smarter. Faster.” Her jaw tightens. “By two, I no longer existed.”
For a flicker of a second, I see it. A vision of her past.
No longer the woman in front of me. I see her as a child. A child who is reaching, waiting, and consistently unseen. All of Oksana’s feelings hit before I can stop it. A hollow ache resides within my chest. It feels familiar and dangerous.
Her laugh snaps it in half. “God, you’re pathetic,” she sneers, like she knows that I can feel it too and hates me for it. “I never wanted his love.”
I don’t entirely believe her. Some part of her underneath all that hate wants what every child wants. Acceptance.
“What do you want?” I demand.
Her expression stills. Then shifts. “The only thing worth anything,” she answers quietly, “was my mother.”
Her gaze drifts back to the roses. And for the first time since this meeting began, there is a shift of softness within her. Something real.
“She believed children might change him,” she continues. “That he could… love.” Her throat tightens. Barely noticeable if you weren’t watching closely. “When she realized what he planned for us…” Her voice thins. “She tried to leave.”
My breath catches.
Her eyes snap to mine. “There is no leaving.”
The words hit like a blade.
“The punishment for that?—”
“Is death,” I finish, my words barely a whisper.
Her pupils flare. Her teeth clench. “The roses,” she points out, voice flattening again, “were a reminder.”
“Of what?”
“Of how easily something beautiful can be destroyed.”
She doesn’t deserve my sympathy, but the ache in my chest hits before I can stop it.
Not for her, but to mourn for the little girl she’d been. No child should grow up believing they were invisible. No daughter should lose the only parent who ever made her feel safe and loved.
Then I remember the bodies she’d left behind. The families she’s shattered and the lives she’d destroyed to prove a point to a madman. She’s replicated the same kind of fate for other daughters and sons…for what?
Whatever happened to that little girl... she died long before I ever met the woman standing in front of me.
Oksana’s softness vanishes. Gone as if it were never there. Replaced by something cold. Final.
“If you want power,” she recites as if it’s been instilled in her for as long as she has taken breath, “you take it. You hold it. You become strong enough that no one can take it from you.”
“That’s why you left,” I guess.
“There was nothing for me there,” she confirms. “Not while she existed.” Her gaze sharpens. “I wanted him to see it. To see me.” She pauses, lips pressing thin as she inhales through her nose. “I didn’t expect her betrayal.”
My stomach drops.
“But her death?” she hesitates, lips curving faintly. “Convenient.”
“You hated her that much?” I ask.
“She made it easy.” Her eyes darken. “I was ready,” she goes on. “Ready to take everything from him.” Her gaze snaps to Alexei. “And then you brought her back.”
My breath stills.
Her.
Me.