And anyone who thinks they can take what we killed for is going to learn what happens when you threaten us.
EPILOGUE - Moscow Safe House, Three Months Later
Iwake up to the sound of Roman’s breathing and the weight of his arm across my waist and the grey light of Moscow winter filtering through the curtains I chose myself because this is our bedroom now, our home, our life built from the ashes of everything we burned to get here.
His chest rises and falls against my back in the slow rhythm of deep sleep, and I let myself have this moment before the day starts, before the captains need decisions and the empire needs tending and the world remembers that we are Pakhan and Tsaritsa with targets on our backs and blood on our hands.
His hand spreads warm and heavy across my stomach, fingers curled loosely against my skin where my sleep shirt has ridden up during the night. I press back into him because I can,because he’s mine. After all, six months of waking up beside him haven’t dulled the wonder of it.
The tremor starts in his right hand around four in the morning, every night, regular as clockwork. I’ve learned to feel it against my skin without waking fully, learned to cover his damaged fingers with my own and hold them still until the nerve misfires quiet down and his breathing evens out again.
He doesn’t talk about it. The hand that will never hold a bow again, the fingers that shake when he’s tired or stressed or pretending he’s fine when he isn’t. At least he can move his hand now. His mother’s Stradivarius sits in its case in the corner of our bedroom, untouched, and some nights I catch him looking at it.
“You’re thinking too loud,” he murmurs against my hair, voice rough with sleep and deeper than usual because mornings soften him in ways the daylight burns away.
“I’m thinking about Belgium.” I turn in his arms to face him, and his eyes are still half-closed but tracking me. “The headmaster confirmed my visit for today. Mishka doesn’t know we’re coming.”
Roman’s hand finds my jaw, thumb tracing along my cheekbone with the tenderness he saves for moments when we’re alone, and he doesn’t have to perform strength for anyone but me. His right hand stays pressed between us, hidden against the sheets where the tremor won’t show.
“Nervous?”
“Terrified.” I press into his touch. “The last time he saw me in person was January, Roman. When you threw me over your shoulder, and I was screaming. Before the river and the factory and everything we did to claim this throne. He was a boy then. Now he’s—”
“Still your brother.” His thumb moves to my lips, tracing the shape of them. “Still the reason you signed that contract andwalked into my house and let me think I was the one claiming you when really you were claiming everything.”
“I didn’t claim you.”
“You did.” His smile is slow and devastating and only for me, and even after months of seeing it, I’m not immune to the way it transforms his face from dangerous to beautiful. “First day, that look in your eyes—I was finished, solnyshko. I just didn’t know it then.”
I kiss him, and his left hand slides into my hair and holds me close while we breathe each other in.
“He’s going to have questions,” I say against his lips. “Hard ones. About what we do and who we’ve become and whether the bodyguards and the ballistic glass are worth it.”
“Then we answer them.” He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes, and the grey morning light catches the angles of his face, the scar from jaw to ear that I’ve traced with my fingers and my lips and my tongue until I know its shape better than my own name. “Honestly. Mishka’s smart enough to handle the truth. He deserves that from us.”
“Us.” The word settles warm in my chest. “You’re coming?”
“Did you think I’d let you face this alone?” His left hand tightens in my hair, possessive and grounding and exactly what I need. “Where you go, I go. That includes awkward conversations with teenage brothers who have every right to hate me.”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“He should.” Roman’s expression shifts. “I bought his sister. Kidnapped her under his eyes. Put her in danger that nearly killed her three separate times. If I were in his place, I’d want me dead.”
“Then we show him who you really are.” I press my palm flat against his chest, feeling his heart beat steadily beneath my hands. “Not the monster from January. The man who drank poison for me. Who took bullets for me?”
“The man who loves you more than the throne.” The words warm my belly, my thighs, every nerve ending that’s learned to respond to him. “More than the empire. More than every breath left in this damaged body.”
“Ya lyublyu tebya.” The Russian feels right for this, intimate and heavy with meaning I couldn’t capture in English. “Ya lyublyu tebya, Roman Viktorovich, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life proving it.”
His kiss is deeper this time, hungry and claiming and full of promise, and when he finally pulls away, we’re both breathing harder. His left hand has found its way beneath my shirt to spread warm against my ribs while his right one is caressing my breast.
“Later,” he promises, and the word is a vow. “After Belgium. I’m going to take you apart so thoroughly now that I feel something with this hand.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“I’m counting on it.”
* * *
