Alexei scratched the side of his head. “You can’t... I don’t understand.”
Evelina moved her gaze between the two of them. “Do you suffer from word blindness?”
He cringed. Blindness made him sound so helpless, and he didn’t want to be helpless. He had spent the past decade of his life working and training so that helpless was the one thing he would never, ever be.
Just like the prophet Jeremiah, who had spent his entire life warning the nation he loved that destruction was coming.
Just how helpless had Jeremiah felt sitting in a prison cell, after doing everything in his power to protect the people around him and failing so miserably at it?
“I still don’t understand.” Alexei looked at Evelina. “Are you telling me Mikhail can’t read?”
“Please stop,” he muttered.
“But why can’t you read?” Alexei stepped closer to the bars. “You went to school like the others.”
“Yes, and I sat through all the lessons the same as everyone else. But I just can’t... The letters move, all right? They don’t stay still. They bounce around the page, and the harder I try to focus, the more they move.”
“It’s called word blindness,” Evelina said. “I have a student who suffers from it. It’s something I learned about when I went to teaching school.”
Mikhail reached out to grip the cell bars. If only he weren’t so helpless. If only he weren’t a burden. If only?—
“You are not a burden. Not ever! Do you understand?” Alexei’s hands settled over his on the cold metal.
Mikhail blinked. Had he said that aloud?
He must have, because Alexei had a fierce look in his eyes. “And there’s no need to apologize or say you’re helpless when you have an entire family ready to back you up. Two are better than one, but you don’t have just one other person supporting you. You have the entire family. That’s twelve other people. No one is asking you to get out of this mess by yourself. None of us even want you to try.”
“But...”
“But nothing. Even Jesus needed help carrying his cross.” Alexei’s voice was firm, carrying through the jail with enough authority that the other inmates in the cells near the door were sure to hear him.
Mikhail opened his mouth, trying to formulate some kind of response, some kind of protest, some kind of way to prove he could get out of this situation by himself.
But before he could say a word, voices erupted from the other end of the jail, where the door separated the guard’s room from the cells—rather loud voices.
Alexei turned to look at the door. “Is that a woman out there?”
Evelina put her papers back into her satchel. “It sounds like it, but it’s awfully late for a woman to be visiting the jail.”
“She sounds distraught. Let me see if she needs help,” Alexei said.
Mikhail sighed. “There’s no question about whether she’s distraught.”
Evelina placed the satchel on her shoulder and adjusted the strap. “Perhaps her husband was arrested earlier tonight, and she’s just now learning of it.”
“No.” Mikhail winced. “That’s not it.”
“How do you know?” Alexei turned back to him.
“Because I recognize the voice. It’s Bryony Wetherby.”
34
Bryony had waited until she was sure the men were all downstairs in the study before sneaking out of the window in Rosalind’s room. Rosalind told her she was better off staying in the house until everyone was in bed for the evening, but she simply had to see Mikhail now.
The map Rosalind had drawn for her and the instructions on how to get to the lower level of the administrative building on Castle Hill proved accurate even in the dark. But her biggest problem turned out to be the two guards who were stationed at the door to the jail cells. The moment she asked to see Mikhail Amos, they narrowed their eyes at her, and the taller of the two men even crossed his arms over his chest.
“Are you family?” His voice was overly loud for the small space.
