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She drinks and pulls away from me, showing I’ve overstayed my welcome being this close.
No matter.
Taking the other cup of tea, I slide from the bed and approach the window. The world is pitch black now with just the single sharp glow of the moon. All the stars hide between clouds, waiting with the same bated breath I have in my own chest for whatever Alena might say or do.
The tea is sharp, nettle and honey, if I had to make a guess, and the taste brings a bitter pulse through my chest. Alyona made me this tea all those years ago when I had to sit down with my brother and sister to tell them our parents had died.
It is oddly fitting that it rests in my hands right now, with the news of their deaths hanging in the air to be cleared.
Another sip, and I close my eyes, cursing my mind as it replays the look on Alena’s face on the stairs. I’ve done what I can to keep that side of me away from her, not wanting to expose her to the horrors this life can bring.
I wonder, does that make me as bad as her father, trying to shelter her like that?
Being the bad guy isn’t new, but fuck, I don’t want Alena to look at me like that ever again.
I drain my cup and tighten my grip around the porcelain, then I slowly turn to Alena. She stares down at her own cup.
A deep sigh rattles through my chest, and finally, words come.
“I killed him for you.”
Those words seem to ignite a fire in Alena, and her head snaps up to me, eyes ablaze with anger and life. “How?” she snaps bitterly. “How could killing him ever be for me? How?”
15
ALENA
Anger surges, hot like acid, as it floods up my throat and ignites heat in my fingertips.
For me?
How dare he try and justify murder by claiming it was for my own good. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, in this world that is worth killing for.
And yet, even as I settle on that feeling, there’s a flurry in my chest that proves that’s a lie, and the muscles around my abdomen clench.
Would I kill to protect my baby?
Maybe.
Yes?
Theorizing and committing are two completely different things.
“Don’t you dare,” I spit, shifting onto my knees. “Don’t you dare use me to justify what you did! That man, he came here to help us. To help me! He was in here, answering every question and soothing all my worries, and then you went and killed him!”
“I know.” Kristof’s voice remains flat. Where he stands by the window, half turned away from me, the sharpness of the moonlight across his face highlights all his angles, and for a second he looks thinner. More gaunt than normal.
“Then why?”
“I couldn’t trust him.” Kristof’s knuckles bleed white around the cup he’s gripping. “Don’t you understand? All it takes is one person, one touch, or one threatening whisper in his ear for that man to come back here with a needle filled with the wrong medication, and you’d end up dead. I asked him to stay. I did. But he wanted to leave, and I can’t—I won’t—risk it.”
His throat clenches as he swallows.
He killed that doctor because of a maybe?
“That’s bullshit,” I snap at him. “You just can’t stop killing people, can you? Hasn’t there been enough death?”
He scoffs dryly, his gaze down. “Too much. But I won’t risk anyone outside of these walls learning any details about you or our baby. Not one soul. If he had stayed, become a live-in doctor, then I would have allowed it, but instead, he wanted to leave and I wasn’t going to risk one of Aleksander’s spies seeing him leave this place.”
