Page 195 of Marrying the Savage

My jaw tightens. She sees it.

“Yes,” I say. “About Anya too.”

Sofia looks at me for a long moment, then nods once.

“Fine. Doctor first,” she says, rolling her eyes.

29

SOFIA

I leave the music room before Damir can change his mind about the doctor and carry me there himself.

He lets me go, which is still new enough to feel suspicious. He watches me walk out, his eyes on my back, his face unreadable in that way that means he’s thinking five things at once and deciding which one I’m allowed to see. I don’t ask what any of them are. I already have enough things in my head.

The piano stays behind me in the bright room, black and polished and ridiculous.

Mine, he said. As if a piano can fix a prison. As if it doesn’t matter that some part of me wanted to touch every key just because he bought it for me.

I hate that part of me.

I hate that it’s getting stronger.

I walk toward my room to change into something simpler for the doctor. The dress I’m wearing covers my throat, but it feels too neat, too deliberate, too much like a costume meant to hide that last night happened. The hallway is quiet, though not empty. Guards stand at their usual posts. One of the maids passes me with fresh towels and gives me a quick, careful smile.

Everyone is careful now. That’s worse than being hated.

I turn into the west corridor, and I’m almost at my door when I hear voices from the sitting room nearby.

I should keep walking. I know that.

Instead, I stop.

The sitting room door is not fully closed. They are not shouting, but the house carries sound well when people think no one is listening.

“She was gone for three days,” Irina says. “She was in a club with another man, apparently safe enough to walk around. I don’t understand why he’s trusting her so blindly.”

“Keep your voice down,” Grigori says.

“I am keeping my voice down.”

“You are not keeping your judgment down.”

There’s a pause.

Kirill says, “Judgment is not the problem. The problem is that we still don’t know what she was doing there.”

My hand tightens around the edge of my sleeve.

Irina answers before Grigori can. “Exactly. What was she doing? Why did she not call? Why did she not send word? Damir tore half the city apart, and she was sitting inside a club.”

“She was scared,” Grigori says.

“She is always scared of something when it suits her.”

I stand very still.

Grigori’s voice hardens. “Enough.”