"I don't usually behave," he answers. The corner of his mouth admits warmth and kills it neatly before it can run wild. I tape the gauze and set my palm over it for an extra heartbeat. His skin is very warm.
"It will scar," I say, and the stupid softness I sometimes hate leaks into my voice.
"I know," he says. "They all do."
I want to ask where else. My thumb slides once along the edge of the tape. My crucifix slips forward. He catches it with two fingers and holds it away from blood. The gesture is so absurdly reverent that my ribs ache.
"Was it Sergei?" I ask again, softer now, because I cannot pretend I don't know the names of our enemies.
He shakes his head once. It is not a no. It isanot here. I hear what he doesn't say—the politics, the cost of naming, the way a word dropped in a house like this can become a blade before it hits the floor. He has learned my values well enough to refuse to make a spectacle where I have to walk. I'm relieved and insulted in the same breath. I'm an efficient contradiction.
I clean the tin, cap the bottle, throw the spoiled gauze into the metal bin. He pulls the knit down, sets the line of his clothes back into order. When he stands, the window light casts him as a saint a parish would trust to carry candles. He buttons his jacket and is suddenly again the man who makes rooms stop lying.
"You are pulling away," I say, not because it is true, but because I need to make the sentence solid so I can test it. His gaze lifts. A thousand decisions sit in his eyes and don't ask for applause.
"I'm placing you where stray fire cannot reach," he says. "It is a wall."
"A wall cuts both ways," I answer. "It keeps wolves out. It also keeps women in." The temper in me lifts its head like a dog who recognizes an old enemy. I stroke it once and tell it to lie down. "I will not be kept. Not even kindly."
He doesn't argue. He never argues when I say something that is more oath than opinion. It is infuriating and one day might be the reason I forgive him for everything he has not done yet. He steps close enough for my pulse to notice and not close enough to crowd. His hand lifts as if it has a right, then waits. When I don't move, he sets his palm on my cheek, thumb at the hinge of my jaw, pressure so light itcould be a question. The look in his eyes is not ownership. It is inventory, the way a man measures his gear before a fight so he doesn't lie about what he can carry.
"I keep vows," he says. "I will not lie to you. I will not barter with God on your behalf to make my work easier. If I'm silent, it is because speaking would put your name on my blade. I will not do that."
"Do you trust me?" I ask. I hate the need in my voice. I hate how fast my grandmother's voice arrives to say that wanting truth is not weakness.
"More than I trust myself." He plants it like a stake. It lands and doesn't ask for discussion. He lets go of my face and steps back into the armor of his posture. The distance is both courtesy and strategy. I forgive it more than I want to.
When he leaves, the room loosens by a shade, as if the walls release a held posture. I make tea and forget to drink it.The Book of Vowslies open on my lap, the red ribbon cutting the page like a small wound that refuses theater. I trace one line with my finger.To keep no secrets that could undo us.My mouth flattens. I'm thinking of something I don't want to speak into this room. I'm thinking of Aleksandr.
I don't want to summon him into my day, but I have learned hard lessons about ghosts that smile too softly. They use silence like a weapon and politeness like a bridge. He waited outside my parish last night as if the street were a parlor and the snow an invitation. He smelled the same. He wore the same apology I once mistook for courage. I gave him nothing then. I'm giving him my attention now. I will not give him the canvas to draw lines in my life with his presence. I'm done building altars to what-ifs.
I open my phone. The screen lifts my face in winter light. I type slowly because speed has cost me before.
Don't wait outside St. Nicholas. Don't stand near the community center. Don't send flowers. Stay away from me.
I don't explain the difference between a vow and a leash. I don't ask whether he knows it. I press send and set the phone down on the window ledge, where the cold can bleed the heat from my hand. The text leaves with a charge that feels like relief and like a risk.
The afternoon sulks toward evening, blue leaking into the corners like spilled dye. The house changes timbre the way water changes temperature between one tile and the next. Somewhere, dinner becomes steam and garlic. In the corridor, boots walk past in a pattern I now recognize as his men at a distance that respects my steps. It should feel like a cage. Today, it feels like a roof.
I pick up the book again. The lamplight turns the gold leaf on a saint's halo into a soft coin. I hear my grandmother hum her washing-day song as if she were standing behind me pinning towels with hands that never stopped working. I practice my half of the vows once more, quietly, because saying them out loud in my room feels like inviting God to sit on the chair by the window and watch me try to be brave. "To bind my fate to his," I say. I keep my voice steady and my back straight and refuse to apologize to my younger self, who swore she would never give any man that much leverage. This is not leverage. This is will.
The phone buzzes. The tone is brief and indifferent. My stomach drops before my hand moves. Intuition is a witch who lives in my bones and never misses her cues. I pick it upand see the name I thought I had escorted out of my day. Aleksandr writes like he speaks—measured, polite, calculated to make words vulnerable in good lighting.
He cannot protect you from what is coming.
17
VALYA
The phone buzzes, a plain vibration on wood, impersonal as a stamped envelope. I turn it over and read Aleksandr's line again, the one he favors when he wants to pass cruelty off as wisdom. He cannot protect me from what is coming. The words look like clean snow. Then a truck rolls through. I set the screen face down, press my palm to it until the haptic beat quiets, and listen to the house breathe.
Morning arrives colorless and exact. Snow lifts from the iron fence in thin veils, the way flour hangs above a baker's table before it settles. The pane is cold against my forehead. I take care not to leave a mark because my grandmother swats my hand from the glass even now. My feet carry me into the hallway, my veins seeking the warmth of a strong cup ofzavarka,the black tea concentrate she swore by. Beeswax and faint myrrh thread the hall, a chapel smell that clings to winter like a blessing that refuses to fade. Halfway down, I taste metal, then nausea, then air. I press a hand to my stomach, then to my chest.
For a week, I have woken with a queasiness nested under my sternum, a small, steady bird. Some mornings, it is only wings. Today, it has claws. I'm not fragile, and I'm not dramatic. I am, however, a body. I go to the bathroom, with its green stone tiles that look wet no matter how long the heat runs. The cedar soap lifts a resinous clean that steadies me. Even washing my hands feels like putting one thing right.
The mirror is Empire-era gilt, foxed glass ringed with acanthus leaves, heavy with inherited judgment. It offers me my face without sympathy. I smile at it like a woman who belongs to herself, because I always have. The queasiness answers with a quietNoand persists. I count backward in weeks and don't like the number.
In this house, privacy is a rumor. Housekeepers empty every bin, sort recyclables, and report anomalies. I don't leave evidence that fits in a palm. I leave my phone facedown on the charger with the radio low so the room keeps breathing in my name, then slip an old flip in my pocket for emergencies. I dress in thrifted wool that disappears among the furs and wrap the red scarf low, not as a flourish but as a mask. A narrow thread of red ties my wrist, luck by inheritance, a promise the size of a seed. I choose boots and no perfume.
