Thirty-Eight #2
she wasted no time. She wrested herself free from Chane’s grip and knelt down, retrieving the phone.
“Here,” she said, thrusting it at him. “You dropped this.”
Chane, frowning in confusion, took the phone. He turned it over in his hands, examining the new scuff marks.
“Come on, Klaud,” Julian said, before Chane had a chance to speak again. “Deckard wants us back downstairs.” To Chane, he said, “Sorry. I guess you’ll have to play by yourself.”
As they made their way back downstairs, Klaudia’s stomach still roiling with residual disgust, she noticed that Julian had
grown uncharacteristically quiet. Subdued. He hadn’t liked the plan, but why? She didn’t flatter herself to think that he
might be jealous—but maybe protective. She remembered the way that he had subtly positioned himself between her and Carter in the dining hall,
as if to keep her safe.
When they reached the fourth-floor landing, Julian looked up at her and said, “I didn’t call my father.”
Panic gripped her. “What?”
“I couldn’t,” he said. His voice was low, barely more than a whisper. “I know he won’t come for me. He didn’t come for me
before.” Julian let out a breath. “Don’t worry. I called someone else. Our driver, Fikret. He’s going to come in a helicopter
tomorrow night. He’ll get us out.”
“You trust him?”
“With my life.”
Slowly, Klaudia nodded, and then she regarded Julian closely. She didn’t know exactly when, but at some point she had come
to rely on him. His quips, his charms, his compliments, even his little challenges—they made her feel like a real person.
Not like the mask she wore, not like the cold creature she pretended to be. They made her feel like she deserved the mundane
joys of an ordinary girl. Uncomplicated. Free.
So she hated that he looked so despondent now. Klaudia wished she were better at this, better at kindness and comfort. She
considered the words for a long moment before saying, “My father wouldn’t come for me, either.”
Julian’s brow furrowed.
“He was the one who had me arrested. He . . .” Klaudia’s gaze drifted past Julian, memories crowding her vision. “He’s never
loved me. I wasn’t what he wanted from a child. There was always something wrong with me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Klaudia.”
Her chest seized, almost painfully. Julian’s stare was both soft and intense, and she could almost believe him. She tried
to think of an equally reassuring reply, or even a coy barb, words that would make her feel like she deserved the attentions
of someone like Julian Joyce-Young III.
But those words never came easily to her.
Instead, what she said was “So where is Fikret taking us?”
“My family has a compound on Martha’s Vineyard,” Julian said. “No one has been there since . . . No one will be there.”
Klaudia nodded again. Maybe, if they had longer, she could have summoned up the kind of words she wanted to say—been the kind
of girl she wanted to be. But that would require everything to be different. It would mean living in a world that Klaudia
couldn’t even allow herself to dream of.
Back in her room, Klaudia ordered a plate of food and picked at it, running through the plan in her mind. There were so many
ways it could go wrong and so few eventualities where they escaped alive. They would have to be quick, clever, bold, and maybe
just a little bit foolish. But wasn’t all hope, to some degree, foolish?
She also examined the dress hanging in the wardrobe. Just seeing it made her skin prickle, but Klaudia removed it from the
garment bag and tried it on. It fit perfectly, tight around her breasts and hips.
As she stared at herself in the mirror, Klaudia felt very much removed from her own body.
She could make herself look presentable, well-groomed, even sophisticated and elegant, patting on lipstick and pinning back her hair, but it felt like dressing up a doll.
There was no connection between the physical form and the mind that controlled it.
It had been that way for as long as she could remember.
Once she had ensured that it fit, Klaudia took off the dress and hung it back in the garment bag. She closed the wardrobe.
When Klaudia put her civilian clothes back on, a piece of paper fluttered out of the jacket pocket. She leaned down to pick
it up. It was Julian’s note, the one where he had told her to play the Archangel Variation. The one where he had called her
sweetheart. She was bewildered for a moment to see it. Had Deckard retrieved it from the coat she had worn in Traumstadt and slipped
it into this jacket? If so, why?
Her fingers ghosted over the letters, tracing her name as it was written in Julian’s neat penmanship. There was no reason
to hold on to it; the note had served its purpose. But Klaudia tucked it back into her pocket anyway, pulse humming.
There was a knock at the door.
Klaudia walked over and peered through the peephole, expecting to see Julian or Nadiya or Giselle, or even Deckard. But instead
it was Chane.
Her instinct was to jump back, or pretend she wasn’t there. But it was too late for that; Chane had certainly heard her footsteps.
Stomach clenching, Klaudia opened the door.