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“He was at your graduation,” I begin, and his gaze snaps to mine. I’m too nervous to speak, but I push through. “I didn’t know who he was at the time. I just thought he was a charming older man. It was the day after we’d had that fight, and the attention at the time was nice.”
Is this what he wanted now? Detailed information? Confusion and pain swirl in the pit of my stomach. Why is he acting like this?
His face is turning red as the vein in his neck bulges, but I continue. “I thought you’d never look at me as anything more than a friend, and I wanted to stop thinking about you every day. It was turning into a cruel obsession, and when he came…” My voice squeaks at the end. It sounds like an entirely different man I’m describing than the monster we both hate. I remind Dmitri, “I was already moving to Russia for my ballet, so it was never for him. But he was there. I didn’t realize who he was until I’d lived there for two years already… when he… he began to become cruel and his questions about you obvious.”
My bottom lip trembles as I think about the quick descension of the charming older man I thought had swept me off my feet at twenty-two. A man who promised to show me the world but caged me from it instead. “I swear had I known, Dmitri, I would’ve never gone with him.”
He sneers a hateful expression, twisting his features. His voice shakes as he pins me with a stare and says. “I have gone insane trying to free you from his grasp to find out that not only had you willingly put yourself there, but you enjoyed it.”
“I live in a state of fear!” I snap back angrily. “What part of that do you think I enjoy?”
It’s crushing and unfair. His words a twisted spite for his father that has now turned to me.
“I tried to end it once,” I say a little too quietly. “When I realized that I missed home and wanted to come back.” Memories from that night flood me. “He’d become angry. Patronizing. Perverted.” I remember it clearly. “Dance, little dove, dance,” he said. I choke at the memory of what was to come next. “I was scared, and I put a knife across his throat trying to escape, but even that didn’t make him stop. If anything, he found it amusing, and then he did so much worse. For years, I lived under his reign, so don’t you dare try to insinuate that I enjoyed it when you weren’t even there in the living hell that I was forced to stay in!”
Dmitri’s a raging, unmoving storm. I always knew he’d hate me for it. For being a silly little girl swept up in promises that I didn’t realize came with poisonous strings attached. That I’d be isolated and locked away in what someone else described as love—it was cruel and unrelenting. Nothing other than a sick and twisted game.
“I find it funny that you left all of that out,” he says, the thick vein in his neck looking like it’s about to explode. He looks like, at any moment, he’s about to go on a killing spree. Like his father, violence has always Dmitri’s solution. These last few months, I’d seen a different side to him. A more mature and loving side. But I realize that he’s still the boy hating on the world for the hand he was dealt. And I couldn’t fault him for it now that I understood his demon’s provocations. And part of me now realized somewhere, deep down, that little boy is unable to escape his father’s shadow.
“I don’t want you to hate me,” I squeak. I knew he’d look at me as he is now. Disgusted. Repulsed. Looking at me as if I’m now tainted. Wasn’t I, though?
A cruel smile tugs at his lips. “Had I known, I would’ve never fucking touched you.”
His words cut deep and tear me in two. I go to speak but can’t.
“I think we should both walk our separate ways right now,” Layla says cautiously as she steps back into our peripheral. She’d been there the whole time, but we’d been so fixated on one another. “Dmitri, you need to leave. You’re not acting like yourself right now.” And there’s an edge to her tone I don’t understand.
“Why?” Dmitri says, and it’s devoid of any emotion he’d shown me over the past few months. “We’ve said everything we’ve had to. That’s all I needed to know.”
He turns and walks out the door, and I’m too shocked and weak to tell him to come back. I don’t deserve for him to ever come back. I curl further into myself. Layla seems torn, and as much as I want my sister here to hold me and tell me everything’s going to be okay, I just want to lay in my misery. I don’t want her pity either. My actions lead me here. As much as I wanted to blame Dmitri long ago, the fault had always sat with me.
“Go, Layla,” I say quietly. Because more than ever, Dmitri needed his best friend now.
She still seems perplexed.
“Where will I go?” I say, mocking myself. “It’s not like I can run away.”
I look at her now and notice the way her expression twists and tears prick at her eyes. As I thought, someone removed my shoes before tucking me into bed. And as I suspected, my sister would’ve seen the savage damage to my feet.
“We need to talk about this,” she says gently but looks at the door.
I nod and hide my face on my knees, encouraging her to leave. She runs out of the room, and I’m left in a weighted blanket of guilt.
Dance, little dove, dance. His voice echoes in my mind, a mockery of everything he stole from me.
Why didn’t you just kill yourself? Lyle’s voice echoes.
I curl into myself further.
I was being treated as a princess locked in a tower when I was the villain. I might’ve been the puppet, targeted by his father initially, but I’d fallen for it.
All I’d done was hurt and jeopardize those who I loved.
Now, I was tired.
The fight sucked out of me… because who would miss me if I vanished?
The Lion’s voice echoes in my head.
