Page 46 of The Pakhan’s Hidden Heiress

The wall turns to powder in a line, and the dust reaches my mouth before the sound arrives. Then the sound comes all at once from a gray van in the bus lane with its side door open.

It is not a bang. It is a sewing machine, fast and flat and businesslike.

My mind offers me the word firecrackers because my mind is a coward and wants this to be somebody’s birthday.

Ruslan puts himself over me.

He does not shove me down. He does not shout. He turns his back to the van and folds his entire body across the open car door with me beneath him.

The paper cup falls. Sunflower shells scatter across the mat.

He takes what was meant for me into his back at a range where nobody misses twice.

I land on the floor of the rear footwell with my legs hanging halfway outside and my face pressed into the carpet. The car is already moving because Danil has the wheel and he is not waiting for the door to close.

“Derzhis’. Hold on.”

The car reverses at forty miles an hour through a bus lane patrolled by a nun, climbs the curb, crashes down again and leaves the rear glass behind in one glittering sheet.

Ruslan is heavy.

That is all I understand for the first block. He is heavy, warm through his coat and growing warmer. The heat runs down the inside of my collar and into my ear.

“Ruslan. Stay with me. You’ve got a whole cup of seeds to finish. I’ve watched you ration those things, so don’t you dare die now.”

“Miss Plaksin,” he says with the two familiar beats, first syllable rising.

Then nothing.

The nothing continues.

A distant part of my mind realizes my wheelchair is still on the pavement outside the school. It lies on its side beside the ramp, one wheel turning, the low sun catching the yellow rim.

The call ended with eight words.

It’s done. She didn’t come out.

This time they will not make the mistake of leaving before someone checks.

Danil carries me upstairs.

There is a conversation about it that I lose in four words. I am not going to think about being carried into my own home by my husband’s second while another man’s blood dries against my neck.

He puts me on the couch and arranges my legs across the cushions before returning to the elevator. He stands in front of it like a mountain, one hand inside his coat, waiting.

It does not take ten minutes for the machinery to move.

The elevator doors open, and Lev comes out at a dead run.

He crosses the floor before the doors finish parting, coat open, moving past Danil as though Danil is furniture. Then he drops onto both knees beside the couch.

Both knees. All the way to the floor.

His hands begin at my face. They enter my hair and come out red. They move to my throat, collarbone and shoulders, then down my arms and across my ribs, searching both sides at once.

He says my name.

Then he stops speaking English.