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I took a step to the side, putting the desk between us. Out. I had to get out.
He darted around the desk and grabbed me by the neck. “Answer me.”
A whimper escaped my lips, but I didn’t speak. Couldn’t speak.
He smacked me. “Answer me, bitch!”
Not again. It couldn’t happen again. I curled into myself, arms around my stomach.
Quick, heavy footsteps sounded in the corridor, and two palace guards burst into the room, followed by Alexey. I took in a deep, gasping breath. Salvation.
“That’s her.” He pointed at me, his face void of emotion. “I caught her trying to poison the baron.”
Not salvation. Just another punishment. I backed up, but the guards took me by the arms.
As they dragged me from the room, I heard Kazimir swear. “I didn’t need your interference, Grigorovich.”
I couldn’t hear Alexey’s response.
***
The clang of the closing door and the thud of the guard’s retreating footsteps echoed in the cold chamber. I blinked as myeyes tried to adjust, but the darkness was absolute. A scuffling sound nearby made me flinch.
“Who’s there?” My words came out in a whimper, still too loud in the silence.
A woman’s voice, raspy from disuse, answered me. “Sofia?”
“Lady Heli?” I felt my way around the cell. It was small and empty with bars on one side. The baroness’s voice came from a nearby cell.
“Why are you here?” she asked. “Were you discovered?”
My face was hot in the cold darkness. Kazimir had seen the papers I’d taken from his desk, but that wasn’t what Alexey had told the guards about. Why?
Maybe he hadn’t realized what the papers were. Or maybe he hadn’t understood why I had them.
No, he was too smart for that. He had to have known. Was it possible he’d done it to protect me? I wrapped my arms around myself, wishing I could talk to him. What was he thinking right now? Did he think I’d betrayed him? That I’d been using him?
“Sofia?”
I had to stay calm, focused. Whatever Alexey thought of me, I was here now. I’d survived Kazimir again. I hadn’t killed him, but he hadn’t killed me, either. “I tried to poison the baron of Arick.” My voice came out steady. Good.
“Why?”
What could I tell her? He hadn’t suspected me of working with Borislav, hadn’t been suspicious about my connections to Lord Ilya and Lady Heli. There was no reason I should have done it—no reason Sofia Stepanova should have done it.
The truth, then. “He attacked me last year, before I came to court. He killed my son.”
Silence met my words, stretching on until it was nearly unbearable. Guilt burned through me, but I raised my chin. I refused to be ashamed about trying to avenge my son.
At last the baroness spoke. “You risked all our lives for revenge?”
My throat tightened. Calm. I had to stay calm. I hadn’t risked our lives. Tsar Borislav would be here in a day or two. They would take the palace, find us, and free us.
As if she’d heard my thoughts, she scoffed. “You are a traitor and a fool. Miroslav’s jailers torture as a matter of course. You won’t be able to withstand it. You’ll tell them everything, and then you will beg for them to kill you.”
I wouldn’t. I didn’t have to survive it long, just long enough for Borislav’s army to get here. A couple days at most.
Still, I shivered at the thought. “Have you—have they tortured you?” I fought to quell the mental image of the old baroness chained to a wall, her slender body marked with bruises, dried blood streaked down her cheek.
