EPILOGUE - Moscow Safe House, Three Months Later
Iwake up to the sound of Roman’s breathing and the weight of his arm across my waist and the grey light of Moscow winter filtering through the curtains I chose myself because this is our bedroom now, our home, our life built from the ashes of everything we burned to get here.
His chest rises and falls against my back in the slow rhythm of deep sleep, and I let myself have this moment before the day starts, before the captains need decisions and the empire needs tending and the world remembers that we are Pakhan and Tsaritsa with targets on our backs and blood on our hands.
His hand spreads warm and heavy across my stomach, fingers curled loosely against my skin where my sleep shirt has ridden up during the night. I press back into him because I can, because he’s mine. After all, six months of waking up beside him haven’t dulled the wonder of it.
The tremor starts in his right hand around four in the morning, every night, regular as clockwork.
I’ve learned to feel it against my skin without waking fully, learned to cover his damaged fingers with my own and hold them still until the nerve misfires quiet down and his breathing evens out again.
He doesn’t talk about it. The hand that will never hold a bow again, the fingers that shake when he’s tired or stressed or pretending he’s fine when he isn’t.
At least he can move his hand now. His mother’s Stradivarius sits in its case in the corner of our bedroom, untouched, and some nights I catch him looking at it.
“You’re thinking too loud,” he murmurs against my hair, voice rough with sleep and deeper than usual because mornings soften him in ways the daylight burns away.
“I’m thinking about Belgium.” I turn in his arms to face him, and his eyes are still half-closed but tracking me. “The headmaster confirmed my visit for today. Mishka doesn’t know we’re coming.”
Roman’s hand finds my jaw, thumb tracing along my cheekbone with the tenderness he saves for moments when we’re alone, and he doesn’t have to perform strength for anyone but me. His right hand stays pressed between us, hidden against the sheets where the tremor won’t show.
“Nervous?”
“Terrified.” I press into his touch. “The last time he saw me in person was January, Roman. When you threw me over your shoulder, and I was screaming. Before the river and the factory and everything we did to claim this throne. He was a boy then. Now he’s—”
“Still your brother.” His thumb moves to my lips, tracing the shape of them. “Still the reason you signed that contract and walked into my house and let me think I was the one claiming you when really you were claiming everything.”
“I didn’t claim you.”
“You did.” His smile is slow and devastating and only for me, and even after months of seeing it, I’m not immune to the way it transforms his face from dangerous to beautiful. “First day, that look in your eyes—I was finished, solnyshko. I just didn’t know it then.”
I kiss him, and his left hand slides into my hair and holds me close while we breathe each other in.
“He’s going to have questions,” I say against his lips. “Hard ones. About what we do and who we’ve become and whether the bodyguards and the ballistic glass are worth it.”
“Then we answer them.” He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes, and the grey morning light catches the angles of his face, the scar from jaw to ear that I’ve traced with my fingers and my lips and my tongue until I know its shape better than my own name.
“Honestly. Mishka’s smart enough to handle the truth. He deserves that from us.”
“Us.” The word settles warm in my chest. “You’re coming?”
“Did you think I’d let you face this alone?” His left hand tightens in my hair, possessive and grounding and exactly what I need. “Where you go, I go. That includes awkward conversations with teenage brothers who have every right to hate me.”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“He should.” Roman’s expression shifts. “I bought his sister. Kidnapped her under his eyes. Put her in danger that nearly killed her three separate times. If I were in his place, I’d want me dead.”
“Then we show him who you really are.” I press my palm flat against his chest, feeling his heart beat steadily beneath my hands. “Not the monster from January. The man who drank poison for me. Who took bullets for me?”
“The man who loves you more than the throne.” The words warm my belly, my thighs, every nerve ending that’s learned to respond to him. “More than the empire. More than every breath left in this damaged body.”
“Ya lyublyu tebya.” The Russian feels right for this, intimate and heavy with meaning I couldn’t capture in English. “Ya lyublyu tebya, Roman Viktorovich, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life proving it.”
His kiss is deeper this time, hungry and claiming and full of promise, and when he finally pulls away, we’re both breathing harder. His left hand has found its way beneath my shirt to spread warm against my ribs while his right one is caressing my breast.
“Later,” he promises, and the word is a vow. “After Belgium. I’m going to take you apart so thoroughly now that I feel something with this hand.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“I’m counting on it.”
* * *
The private jet touches down in Brussels, and my heart hammers so hard I can feel it in my throat, in my fingertips, in every cell of my body vibrating with anticipation and terror in equal measure.
Four months since I’ve held my brother.
Four months of video calls and encrypted messages and counting the days until I could see his face in person, touch his hair, confirm with my own hands that he’s safe and growing into the man our mother would have been proud of.
Roman’s hand finds mine as we descend the stairs, his grip steady and grounding while I fight the urge to run across the tarmac toward the convoy waiting to take us to Ghent. His right hand stays in his coat pocket, hidden.
“Breathe,” he murmurs against my ear. “He’s safe. He’s healthy. And in forty minutes you’re going to hug him so hard he complains about his ribs.”
“What if he doesn’t want—”
“He wants.” Roman’s thumb strokes across my knuckles, the gesture so automatic now that I don’t think he realizes he’s doing it. “I’ve read his messages to Galina. He asks about you every week. When you’re eating. Whether you’re sleeping. If the nightmares are still bad.”
“He asks Galina?”
“He didn’t think you’d answer honestly. Smart kid.”
Roman guides me toward the armored SUV with his hand warm against the small of my back. “He’s also asked her three separate times whether I’m ‘treating you properly.’ Direct quote.”
Despite everything, I laugh. “That sounds like Mishka.”
“It sounds like someone who loves his sister and doesn’t trust the man who married her.” Roman opens the SUV door for me. “I’m looking forward to changing his mind.”
The drive to Ghent takes thirty-seven minutes, and I spend every one of them with my hand in Roman’s and my eyes on the landscape scrolling past the bulletproof windows. My heart is pounding with the knowledge that we’re getting closer, closer, closer.
The boarding school appears through bare trees, and my breath catches at the sight of it—grey stone buildings arranged around a courtyard dusted with snow, windows glowing warm against the April cold, teenagers in blazers and scarves moving between buildings.
Mishka is somewhere inside those walls.
Safe. Educated. Normal in ways I fought and bled and killed to give him.
“There.” Roman points toward a figure emerging from the main building, and my whole body goes still.
Mishka.
Taller than in January, his growth spurt was finally catching up with his appetite.
Dark hair falling across his forehead, the way it always has, the way our father’s did.
Blazer rumpled because he’s never cared about appearances, messenger bag slung across his chest, hands shoved in his pockets against the cold.
He hasn’t seen us yet.
He’s walking toward the dormitory with his head down, probably thinking about equations or robotics or whatever project has captured his brilliant mind this week. I want to run to him so badly my legs shake with the effort of staying seated.
“Go.” Roman’s voice is soft. “I’ll follow.”
The SUV door opens, and I’m out, my boots crunching on gravel as I move toward my brother with four months of missing him burning in my chest.
“Mishka.”
He looks up.
His face goes through a dozen expressions in the space of a heartbeat—shock, disbelief, hope, fear, joy—and then he’s dropping his bag and running, actually running across the courtyard toward me. I catch him in my arms with a sob I couldn’t suppress if my life depended on it.
“Anya.” He’s taller than me now. When did that happen? His arms wrap around me so tight I can barely breathe, and I don’t care, I don’t care about anything except the fact that he’s here and solid and alive and holding me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear.
“Ya zdes’,” I whisper into his hair, breathing in the smell of him—teenage boy and cafeteria food and the expensive shampoo the school provides. “I’m here, bratik. Ya zdes’.”
“You came.” He pulls back just enough to look at my face, his eyes searching mine with an intensity I recognize from our mother. “You actually came. I thought—the messages said—”
“I know.” I cup his face in my hands, checking every detail—the new sharpness in his jaw, the faint acne across his forehead, the dark circles under his eyes that tell me he hasn’t been sleeping well. “I’m sorry it took so long. But I’m here now, Mishka. You’ll be sick of me.”
“That might take a while.” His smile is watery but real. “I have a lot of complaints about the food here. And my roommate snores. And—”
Movement behind me. Roman approaches, his footsteps careful and measured, giving us space while making his presence known.
Mishka’s expression shifts. The joy dims, replaced by something wary and assessing that makes him look older than fourteen.
“You brought him.”