Guilty that I didn’t walk away fromeverything.
Nikolai called it “getting my life back.” He said I could finally be free—no debts, no guards, and no one watching over my shoulder. That I deserved normalcy.
But the way he said it sounded rehearsed.
I agreed anyway.
I told myself it was the right choice.
That I couldn’t keep living in a house that didn’t feel like mine, waiting for Benedikt to decide what version of me he wanted that day.
Still, it’s strange being back in my old apartment. Most of my clothes are here again, but the rest—shoes, a few boxes, the sweater he once draped over my shoulders when I was cold—are still at his place. I can’t bring myself to go back for them.
Nikolai offered to have someone pack everything up, but I told him no.
I don’t want any more of their help.
I want every thread that connects me to that family cut clean.
“Busy’s good.” My grandmother nods like she knows what I’m not saying. “But don’t let being busy become a distraction. You hear me?”
I give her a faint smile. She means don’t use work to avoid thinking. Which is exactly what I’ve been doing.
I laugh under my breath, breaking off a corner of toast and popping it in my mouth. “You really missed your calling as a therapist.”
She sips her coffee, eyes sharp and soft all at once. “Therapists don’t get to threaten people with wooden spoons.”
“Fair.”
For a while, we just sit there in the calm of our little bubble. The sound of morning TV drifts in from the living room. Birds chatter outside the window. Somewhere down the hall, someone’s oxygen machine hums. Everything feels so domestic and safe that it almost doesn’t fit.
Until my phone buzzes on the counter.
I grab it automatically, my heart jumping before my brain catches up.
Just a spam email.
Of course.
“Expecting someone?”
“No,” I say too quickly, chastising myself because there’s no way he’d reach out to me.
He’s exiled.
He probably had his phone taken away.
I can see him irate in my head. The tight set of his jaw. The way his hand curls into a fist when he’s trying not to lose it.
Benedikt doesn’t handle disobedience well, and I did more than disobey him.
I agreed with his father.
I agreed that he should go.
The thought makes my chest feel heavy. I can almost see him pacing, fuming that I let him be taken. That I didn’t fight for him.
That I chose a quiet life over him.
