The King’s Pawn (Kings of Moscow #1)
1. Alina
ALINA
It’s the same sound I’ve heard every weekday for the past two years.
The alarm is polite, delicate, and almost apologetic as if it understands it is interrupting the last few minutes of peace I manage to carve out before starting my day.
Classes and late-night study sessions and the heavy weight of expectations that never seem to end are what await me outside of these warm sheets.
All things I’ve come to dread over the last few months.
The room around me glows faintly with the winter dawn coming in from my windows, all muted indigos and silver-blue shadows.
The heated floors hum quietly beneath the polished marble, the only other sound in the vast quiet of my family’s Rublyovka dacha .
My room is large—too large, if I’m being honest. My mother once said she wanted me to have space to grow into, but the truth is, it still feels like I’m rattling around inside a museum exhibit of someone else’s life.
I stare up at the ceiling for a moment, letting my eyes trace the ornate molding, gold leaf curling through white plaster in patterns my mother agonized over years ago.
She chose every detail herself down to the exact shade of ivory silk for the curtains, the soft blush tone of the rug, even the subtle peach scent diffused through the vents before bedtime.
She wanted the room to feel warm and safe, a sanctuary.
Some days, it still does.
Most days, it just feels like a mausoleum.
I close my eyes and inhale, letting the faint scent of my lavender pillow spray linger in my lungs before exhaling. Beyond the walls, muted and distant, I hear the footsteps of our staff moving around to ready for breakfast.
Beyond that are the guards changing shifts.
Men from my father’s security detail, all ex-military, all overly serious and allergic to smiling. They’re no doubt already awake and sipping coffee in the guardhouse while waiting for me to wake up and revolve their schedule around me. Just like always.
I know the routine all too well.
They’ll wait for me to emerge from the house right at 7:30. They’ll take me in one of our town cars to campus and drop me off at the front entrance. They’ll sit with their tablets open, linking to every security camera on campus, and monitor every building I enter, every step I take.
My life has always been divided into coordinates and check-ins. My father calls it “precaution” but I call it a cage with invisible bars.
My alarm chimes again, a softer trill this time. A reminder that if I don’t move now, I’ll end up scrambling later and arriving to class with damp hair and annoyance at my own dallying steaming off my shoulders.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed, the silk of my pajama shorts brushing smoothly across my thighs.
The rug beneath my feet is plush enough that my toes almost disappear into it. A birthday present, I think, from years ago. Was I seventeen? Eighteen? Not that it actually matters. Gifts have always been used to fill the spaces where conversation and connection should’ve been.
The air is cool against my bare shoulders when I rise.
I cross the room to the window and pull the curtains aside.
Another gray Moscow morning stares back at me—cold, muted, and incredibly indifferent.
The frost paints delicate veins across the glass, spiderwebbing into patterns that look almost floral.
Beyond the window are the wooded edges of our property.
The guardhouse sits at the front gate, a squat building of dark stone.
I can just make out two figures standing outside it, silhouettes moving in slow, habitual rhythm as they prepare for another day of hovering near me like nervous shadows.
If they see me at the window, they pretend not to, but they will already have been waiting for me down in the foyer by the time I get dressed and grab my school bag.
Privacy is selective in this house.
I let the curtain fall back into place and pad toward my vanity. The mirror is cold when my fingertips brush the surface to wipe away some of the smudges I left on it from the day before while I was readjusting the angle.
For a second, I simply look at myself. My hair is a tangle of chocolate-brown waves, eyes still heavy with sleep with dark circles under them to match. My cheeks are faintly flushed from the warmth under the covers and are a stark contrast to my pale skin.
I look soft here, unthreatening. A porcelain doll placed on a shelf and left to collect dust for fear of breaking.
Beneath that softness, though, and beneath the perfume-scented sheets and curated safety, something restless stirs.
It has been for years.
Not that I can ever put a name to it. But no matter how many mornings I try to ignore the tension growing inside my body, it never works. I’m always brought back here to this moment, to the person staring at me in the mirror, waiting for something to finally happen.
I reach for the comb on the desk and pull it through my hair slowly. The sound is familiar and grounding. Routine is the one thing that makes all of this—the expectations, this watchfulness, this pretend-normality—just a little bit bearable.
To most people, my schedule is quite simple.
Get to the university’s campus by eight, Political Theory lecture at 8:30, followed by Psychology at 10:00.
Lunch alone at 11:00, or with Irene, depending on whether she’s out of class by then or not.
Then it’s on to Accounting and Business Ethics at 1:00, heading to a meeting with my advisor about next term’s research proposal from 3:00 to 4:00, and then home by five.
After that, it’s dinner with my father if he’s around and if work hasn’t swallowed him whole again.
Or if the television crews aren’t filming him touring the new facility he passed the budget bill for.
Or if a scandal hasn’t erupted in the media, requiring an immediate press conference to reassure the city that the Morozovs are still the pillars of integrity in Moscow.
It’s all the same.
Day in and day out.
My phone buzzes where it sits on the nightstand with another reminder from my calendar.
Eight minutes until I’m supposed to be in the shower.
I ignore it and stand again, crossing to the wardrobe instead.
Rows of blouses and pants and tailored coats greet me, all arranged by color like a boutique curated by someone who knows exactly what image I’m expected to present to the world.
My fingers trail lightly across the fabrics. Ivory. Dusty rose. Midnight blue. Neutral tones preapproved by image consultants and political advisors who have never stepped foot in this house yet claim to know me better than I know myself.
I finally pull out a soft cream sweater and a pair of dark high-waisted jeans. Casual but polished. Academic enough to not look out of place on campus and elegant enough to appease the invisible eyes that always seem to track me whenever I’m in public.
When I dress, the clothes slip on easily, like costumes worn too often to feel foreign anymore.
I glance once more at the ceiling, at the gold leaf my mother once ran her fingertips over with a smile, and feel something tug underneath my ribs.
Expectation, memory, a quiet grief that never fully settles.
Today will be like every other day , I tell myself, but the restless thing in my chest whispers otherwise. It stirs deeper now, stretching as if waking from a long slumber.
Routine is safe. Routine is predictable. Routine is what I’ve always relied on even when my mind and my body tell me otherwise.
Yet somewhere beneath that polished, curated calm I’ve seemed to embroil myself in, something is already shifting.
By the time I reach campus, I already want to crawl out of my skin.
The car drops me off at the usual Gate C. It’s the least crowded area and the one my father prefers because it’s “safer”. Whatever that means.
The cold morning air bites at my cheeks as I sling my bag over my shoulder and join the flood of students pushing toward the main courtyard. Laughter echoes off the old stone walls, boots scrape over frost-bitten pavement, and somewhere close by, someone is loudly complaining about an 8 a.m. lab.
Normal sounds. Normal people. Normal life. All of it feels like a costume party where I’m the only one without a mask.
My phone buzzes in my hand before I even make it ten steps inside the gate. When I pull it out of my pocket and look at the screen, I nearly sigh.
Yuri, the head of my father’s security detail.
Of course.
Check in when you are ready to leave campus. Will have a car ready to take you to Yoga this afternoon. –Y
I stop walking long enough to stare at the message, my breath fogging in the cold air.
There’s nothing inherently alarming about it.
It’s routine and most of all expected. Another line in the script of my controlled, neatly compartmentalized existence to make me seem more relatable to the outside world.
Still, something inside me tightens.
I type back a single thumbs-up emoji. Anything more like words, or questions, or God forbid an opinion on hating going to a stuffy class like that after studying all day would invite a follow-up message I am not in the mood to deal with.
Yuri is the type of man who can infer entire novels out of a single sentence.
The emoji keeps everything flat and closed-off.
The rules are simple, anyway—one message every hour that I’m not under direct supervision. If I miss two check-ins in a row, the cavalry arrives.
Cavalry meaning six men in black coats, with guns hooked to their belts and earpieces glued to their ears while they scour the city like a private militia until they find me.