Page 206 of Marrying the Savage

I don’t go back to my room. I go to the music room. The piano is still there, clean and black and unreasonable. Morning light has shifted across the floor, and the room is quiet except for the faint movement of guards somewhere down the hall. I stand in the doorway for a moment, then walk to the bench and sit.

I press one key.

The sound is wrong only because I don’t know what I am doing.

I press another. Worse.

A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. It comes out too small and close to breaking, so I press more keys until the noise becomes enough to distract me from everything else.

“Okay,” I whisper, not sure whether I’m speaking to myself or the tiny impossible thing inside me. “Okay.”

The door opens behind me. I know it’s Damir before he speaks.

The room changes when he enters. It always does. Not because of magic. Because everyone in this house has learned to measure the air around him, and apparently I have too.

I keep my fingers on the keys. “Where were you?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer immediately.

I turn my head. Damir stands near the doorway in his black shirt and trousers, no coat, face unreadable. His knuckles are bruised again, though not badly. There is no blood on him that I can see. His hair is slightly disordered, like he has run a hand through it more than once.

That tells me more than his silence.

“You left the clinic,” I say.

“Yes.”

“Where did you go?”

His eyes hold mine. “I had to deal with something.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No.”

My chest tightens. At least he admits it.

I look back at the piano. “You said we would talk.”

“We will.”

“When? Between disappearances?”

He comes farther into the room. “Sofia.”

I press three keys at once. The sound is ugly.

“Careful,” I say. “I’m armed with music now.”

He stops beside the piano. For a second, I think he might smile.

He doesn’t. He looks tired, but not weak. Never weak. Tired in a way I haven’t seen before, as if whatever happened after he left took something from him he hadn’t planned to spend.

“What did the doctor say?” he asks.

My fingers freeze on the keys.

There it is. The question I knew was coming.