“I thought you were going to kill him,” I reminded Nikolai over my shoulder.
He was silent, leaving his cryptic words to spin around and around in my head.
* * *
Nikolai didn’t letme out of my room again until nighttime, and I spent most of the day reading an English book I found in the dresser and sleeping.
He was waiting for me in the library. A roaring fire burned in the ornate hearth, and a dinner of what smelled like tomato soup and a hunk of dry black bread lay on a small table. I fell on it like a starving wolf. Nikolai chuckled as he watched me. He hadn’t had my hands bound again since this morning, and I enjoyed the freedom of being able to feed myself.
“Don’t eat too fast. You need to keep this down.” He took a seat on the opposite side of the fire from me. Two huge leather wingback armchairs were pulled up around it. A toasting fork was perched over one side of the flames and an odd pan with holes in the bottom.
“It’s for chestnuts,” Nikolai said as he followed my gaze.
“You haven’t tied my hands,” I pointed out after a moment. I hated waiting to see if he was going to restrain me again. I liked to manage my expectations.
Nikolai inclined his head. “I decided to see how it goes. I considered the ways to stop you from running and dying of exposure out in the forest, and I’ve landed on the most effective one. Honesty.”
“Honesty?” I repeated, worry clashing with the food filling my belly.
Nikolai’s lip curved in a knowing grin like he held all the cards and knew it, while I had a losing hand. “I like you, Mallory. You don’t strike me as a lovesick fool or a captive, so I figured the only way you stay with my brother is because he’s lying to you.”
“Kirill doesn’t lie to me. I knew about the engagement,” I pointed out, unsure why I was trying to convince Nikolai not to shed light on what he considered Kirill’s lies. I was afraid, I realized immediately. I was scared shitless about the things I didn’t know.
“True. I was surprised by that. I suppose he thought he could still get out of it,” Nikolai mused. “But there are other things. I forgot to give you my condolences on your loss. Your father, Henry.”
Nikolai leaned in and watched me with a wolfish intensity that turned my stomach.His shrewd eyes caught every flicker of emotion in my eyes, from surprise and shock to hurt.
He smiled. “Oops. Did you not hear the news? Your father passed under Kirill’s care only a few nights ago.”
“What night?” I asked numbly.
“Hmm, let’s see. About three nights ago.”
The night of the panic room. The night he’d come to me and held me close, slept beside me, and shown me the tattoo over his heart. My stomach lurched again as the knowledge that Henry was dead crashed against me like a tidal wave. I dropped my spoon and sat back.
Nikolai watched me, his head cocked to the side like an alien studying human emotions. “No tears for good old dad?”
“We didn’t have a good relationship,” I said woodenly.
The shock was only now fading enough to feel. Henry was dead. My father was dead. For most of my life, he’d been cast in the villain’s role, and it had only gotten worse since the night we’d fled Woodhaven and struggled to survive together. There had been no love lost between us, yet he had been my family. I didn’t know how to feel about his loss, but I knew exactly how I felt about Kirill keeping it from me.
“That’s not all,” Nikolai added, just when the emotional storm inside me died down a fraction. He tapped a paper printout on a small end table next to him, then passed it over to me.“Dr. Petrov is a Chernov man, and he was more than happy to supply the records of your stay in the hospital.”
Fresh pain and anxiety flooded through me. I couldn’t take much more. I already felt sick and dizzy half the time. I reached for the paper with trembling fingers, dropping my eyes and scanning the typed words. It was all medical language, and I could barely make out anything useful in my current state of turmoil.“What does it say?”
“Well, it doesn’t spell it out too clearly, but conclusions can be reached based on your symptoms,” Nikolai said, fiddling with a knife he’d procured from somewhere.
I should be more worried about that knife than the words I typed clearly on the paper.
Current form of birth control:implant.
Condition: effective period lapsed based on hormone concentration in blood. Recommended removal: declined.
“But then again,maybe you have a stomach bug. It could be anything,” Nikolai continued, his dark eyes glinting.
I sat back in a daze. Words failed me. My birth control wasn’t effective anymore? And Kirill knew it, judging by the report. He’d fucking known it.
He’d always made a point to finish inside me, sinking deep and staying pressed in as far as he could. He’d even pressed the spend that escaped back inside me.Something shattered inside my heart.