Natalya #2
“So this is how you imagine a renewed relationship? Not giving me any say in whether I’m in or not?” I accuse him.
He shrugs with the innocence of a teenager caught doing absolutely nothing wrong.
“Yeah.”
I let out an incredulous, offended laugh.
“You can’t just tell me what to do. It’s not gonna work like that. I’m not a—”
“Wait, no no no,” he jumps in. “That’s not…” he trails off, searching for my hands to lace our fingers together, leaning closer.
“I’ll do whatever you want. You can ask for anything and I’ll lay it at your feet. You can do whatever your heart desires with me.” The corner of his mouth lifts into a little mischievous smirk at the last sentence. “But you can’t leave me. That’s the only thing I’m not giving you a choice in.”
His forehead settles against mine before he parts my lips with his thumb, only to steal one long, possessive kiss.
“Anything I want, hm?” I mumble and break the kiss.
He follows me for a second before forcing himself to stop. His nose brushes against mine as he reluctantly pulls away.
“Please tell me you’ll be mine willingly,” he says, his voice carrying a note of genuine pleading. “I just got you out of one chain. I really don’t want to put you into another.”
I let the silence stretch for no reason other than to torment him.
“Okay,” I whisper.
A long relieved breath escapes him.
“Okay,” he repeats quietly, almost as if he’s saying it to himself, before wrapping the towel tighter around me and tucking me in like an oversized burrito.
His hands lock on my knees as he spreads them apart, fitting himself in there and sliding my ass closer to him on the bathroom counter.
Then his hand suddenly finds my ankle and lifts it, as though he’s spotted something he somehow missed during the first round of inspection while I was getting into the bath.
He studies just a small, insignificant bruise.
“Nothing happened to me,” I repeat for what feels like the hundredth time. “No one touched me and he hasn’t done anything to me.”
“How can you be sure?” he asks quietly. “You were unconscious when we found you, Kiara.”
“I’m sure. He’s not—” I stop myself, not actually sure what I really want to say. “He made sure I was okay the whole time.”
He stares at me as if I just fell off the moon.
Even though I’m not emotionally ready to fully dive into the Lucien conversation yet, I can’t keep it to myself anymore.
“I don’t think he would’ve hurt me,” I admit quietly, waiting for his reaction.
“Then why were you—” He trails off with a slow shrug, visibly uncomfortable saying it out loud.
“Because I kept saying things that made Natalya... break.”
The moment her name leaves my mouth, all the blood drains from his face.
“But he never touched me. Not him and not anyone else. He was really just waiting. And he made sure I was taken care of in the meantime. Nothing bad happened to me. Nat was with me all the time,” I explain.
He drags a hand through his hair.
“I don’t understand,” he admits.
Truth is, I don’t really understand it either. I keep trying to put it into words, but no explanation that makes any sense comes to mind.
“So what now?” I ask. “What about Natalya? What about Lucien? What are we actually doing right now?”
He exhales and I can see it before he even starts talking. The mask he’s putting on just to make me feel better, to make me believe he has this under control when I know damn well he’s as lost as the rest of us.
“Lucien will spend some time in the basement until we find his father and kill him,” he says simply, with such confidence that I almost believe he knows what he’s doing.
“Kasien,” I urge.
“Mhm?”
“What about Nat,” I repeat.
His gaze drops to the floor for a moment.
“She’s still asleep. Adrien is there, of course,” he says dryly.
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
He grips the bridge of his nose as if trying to hold something in.
“Kasien,” I whisper gently, cupping his cheek and trying to make him look at me, but he refuses. “Stop hiding, please. Let me in.”
I pull him closer until he finally lets his hand fall away from his face.
He’s crying.
I slide my hand around the back of his neck and pull him into me.
“I ruined her life,” he lets out. “I can’t see her. I can’t look her in the eyes. I’m terrified.”
And suddenly, thinking about my own life feels selfish.
Because Natalya is in the other room, half lost somewhere between reality and illusion.
“How did this even happen?” I whisper.
“I don’t know.” His voice cracks. “We were lied to this whole time. All those years we thought we were protecting her, stupid enough to believe every lie we were fed.”
“We’ll get her back, I promise,” I whisper, pressing his face against my chest, holding him together while he slowly lets it all out, falling apart in front of me.
“We’ll get her back,” I repeat.
Even though I’m not entirely sure how.
I spent the past month trying to understand her shattered mind, and I’m not sure I ever truly reached her. But there are a few things I know for certain.
She’s balancing on a bridge suspended between two worlds.
One is built from grief, forcing her to push them out of her mind because remembering hurts too much.
The other is her fantasy, where she reaches for them over and over, trying to mold them back into existence.
But whenever she loses her balance and falls too far into either world, she screams and breaks down.