Page 159 of Dark King Daddy

I hung up. I sat on the floor. The drawings surrounded me—floor plans, elevation studies, material schedules, a detail sketch of a window jamb I had drawn at three in the morning when I couldn’t sleep. The pencil lines were precise. The paper was soft at the edges from handling.

I was staring at the ceiling, composing a mental complaint about the kitchen light, when Daniil appeared in the doorway.

He leaned against the frame. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow. He had a pen behind his ear that he had probably forgotten was there.

“You’re on the floor,” he said.

“The chair is a crime against hmanity.”

“I’ve been meaning to replace it.”

“You’ve been meaning to replace it since you moved in. It’s still here. It will outlive us all. It will be the last artifact of our civilization.”

He looked at the drawings. His eyes moved across them—not reading, but registering. Taking in the spread of paper, the pencil set beside my knee, the eraser shavings on the floorboard.

“Would you like to make this room your studio?”

The question was practical. He said it the way he said things that were not practical at all—evenly, without emphasis, as though the magnitude of what he was offering could be disguised by the casualness of the delivery.

I looked at him. I looked at the room. The boxes of Lev’s files. The broken lamp. The criminal chair. The window with its decent afternoon light.

“You mean convert it.”

“I mean make it yours. The room. The light. Whatever you need.”

“Daniil.”

“Yes.”

“This is your house.”

I stared at the drawings around me. My pencil set. My eraser shavings. The window jamb detail I had drawn at three in the morning in a house I had been living in since the wedding without fully moving into.

“Most of my things are still at Pioneer Street,” I said.

His expression did not change. He waited.

“My drafting table. My books. The lamp—the good one, the one with the adjustable arm. My chair—you know, one of those weird ones that don’t cause spinal injury. My reference library. The plan chest. Most of my clothes, actually. I’ve been rotating the same four outfits and buying socks from the bodega on Smith Street because I keep forgetting to—”

“Ksyusha.”

I stopped.

“You’ve been keeping things packed,” he said. “At your old apartment. Because some part of you has been treating this as temporary.”

I looked at the floor. The eraser shavings. The pencil lines on paper.

“Yes.”

“I want you here. Not visiting. Not stationed. Here. Your drafting table. Your books. Your plan chest. Your furniture, which I suspect you consider superior to mine in every category.”

“Your taste in chairs is genuinely criminal.”

“I concede the chair. The rest of my furniture is perfectly acceptable.”

“Your nightstand wobbles.”

“It does not wobble.”