for what happened. But a simple, “Glad to see you’re not dead,” would be nice. He hadn’t even sent me a misogynistic note threatening me to eat.
Once again, it seemed I wasn’t a part of his thoughts, while he kept popping into my mind like a game of Whac-A-Mole—especially after he looked me in the eye and told me his mother drove him into a river when he was eight. I said I wouldn’t sympathize with him, but it was hard when he threw his tragic past in my face. I prayed Ronan wouldn’t talk about being an orphan living on the streets. Otherwise, I may as well just tie my hair back in preparation for signing over my soul.
When Yulia lifted a spoonful of soup to my mouth, I turned my head away in exasperation. She’d taken this nursing routine above and beyond just to irritate me. I wasn’t a paraplegic. In fact, the only thing I would die from at this moment was her attention.
The spoon tipped slightly—Yulia might be an old maid, but her hands never shook—and a drip of hot soup spilled onto my T-shirt. I grumbled, “Seriousl—?” The word was cut short by her shoving the spoon into my mouth.
I spit it out with venom. Nonchalantly, she pulled the spoon away to fill it again. I threw the comforter back and jumped out of bed, shooting her a scowl.
“You must eat, devushka.”
“I told you, I’m not hungry. And I’m not staying in that ridiculously comfortable bed anymore. Point me in the direction of the dungeon. I’ll room there for the rest of my stay.” I was The Princess and the Pea. Except the pea was the twisted dejection I was almost killed and then promptly forgotten by a man who fingered me on a secret camera and sent the video to my papa. Gen-Zs wouldn’t know romance if it hit them with a bus.
“You act like someone has forced you to pout for two days.”
I was not pouting. “Would you go traipsing about a house occupied by someone who wants to kill you?”
“I excel at many things, but God did not create me to be nurse.”
“No kidding.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I do not wish to nurse you while you sulk, so I tell you, the men who tried to kill you are dead.”
I swallowed. “Dead?”
“Mertvy.” Dead. Picking up the bowl of soup, she said, “I had to wash their brains off the drive.” Then she sipped her spoonful like a lady.
Blood growing cold, I managed to say, “Lovely.”
She shrugged. “It is job.”
I rubbed my arm to quell the goose bumps that rose, as well as another disturbing sensation: a lightness, a deranged contentment Ronan had killed those men.
Like everything else, feelings were backward in this place. It would be my normal to fight them, to force them to be something they weren’t, but a part of me didn’t have the energy. Another part of me, the one I forced into tight clothes and the desire for acceptance, didn’t want to be normal anymore.
Touching the heart-shaped stone in my ear, the other in D’yavol’s possession, I finally understood Gianna’s words.
In this world, things weren’t black and white.
I preferred yellow anyway.
Tuning Yulia out as she stomped at some poor creature scurrying across the floor, I absently walked into the doorless bathroom. I took a shower, and I didn’t feel anything but curiosity. A tone-deaf curiosity that bloomed with the memory of rainbow-colored vomit, unrealized Russian words, and men lying dead in the snow.
The house after dark held a certain charm, like the haunting creak of a door in the night, a sudden breath of air extinguishing a candle’s flame, and the sensation of being watched through the cracks in the walls. I was grossly exaggerating the situation—regarding the first two at least—though knowing a devil lurked around any corner amplified every little sound, and it didn’t help I stood in his bedroom.
It was undeniably his. His smell was everywhere, and the sheets were black. I shouldn’t be in here, but its secrets drew me in from the hall after I wandered the mansion for an hour.
Even though it was the worst idea I’d ever had, just like Moscow, I wanted to delve into the dark alleys of Ronan’s mind. And finding something to help me escape wouldn’t hurt. A phone, the internet, a Ouija board—anything to contact the outside world.
Going through his nightstand drawers, I examined their contents and dropped a pack of condoms like a hot potato.