He nods and crosses to where I'm pointing—a massive ceramic planter, cracked but still intact, full of dead soil and the skeletal remains of what might have been a rose bush. He lifts it like it weighs nothing, the muscles in his arms flexing, and carries it to where I indicate.
"Where do you want the dead plants?" he asks.
"There's a pile outside. By the shed."
He starts clearing debris, working methodically down the aisle opposite mine. We don't talk much—just the occasional direction, the scrape of tools against ceramic, the rustle of dead leaves being gathered. But the silence is different now. Companionable. Almost comfortable.
I find myself watching him when I think he isn't looking. The way he moves—efficient, controlled, every action purposeful. The way sweat beads at his temples as the greenhouse warms in the afternoon sun. The way his hands handle the dying plants with unexpected care.
At one point, our paths cross in the center aisle. We're both reaching for the same broken pot, and our hands brush.
I feel the contact like an electric shock—his skin warm and rough against mine. We both freeze. I look up and find him staring down at me, his pupils dilated, his breathing slightly uneven.
Neither of us moves.
"Bianca," he says, and my name in his mouth sounds like a prayer. Or a warning.
"We should keep working," I whisper, but I don't pull my hand away.
"We should."
Still neither of us moves.
The moment stretches, crystalline and fragile. I can feel his pulse through his fingertips—or maybe that's my own pulse, pounding so hard I can't tell where I end and he begins. The air between us feels charged, heavy with possibility.
Then a guard's voice calls out from somewhere outside—a routine check-in, nothing urgent—and the spell breaks.
Misha steps back. I snatch my hand away.
"I should—" He clears his throat. "Security matters. I should check in."
"Of course."
He moves toward the door, then pauses on the threshold. Turns back.
"Thank you," he says. "For finding the journal. I never knew it existed. I never knew—" He stops, struggling with words that don't come easily to him. "It meant something. To have her back, even just in words."
"You're welcome," I say.
He nods once and walks away, his footsteps crunching on the gravel until they fade to nothing.
I stand in the greenhouse, surrounded by decay and the first fragile shoots of new life, and press my hand to my chest. My heart is still racing—one twenty, maybe one thirty. The kind of tachycardia that has nothing to do with fear.
He helped me. He told me about his mother. He touched my hand and looked at me like—
Like what? Like I mattered? Like he wanted something he didn't know how to ask for?
I don't know. I don't know anything anymore.
I pick up my trowel and get back to work, but my hands are shaking, and the feeling of his skin against mine won't fade no matter how much dirt I dig through.
He's not the man I thought he was. The monster who threatens dismemberment, the enforcer who's killed people, thecaptor who bought me at an auction—he's also the boy who brought his mother wildflowers, the man who hasn't entered this greenhouse in seventeen years, the guardian who reads his mother's journal alone in the dark.
I'm not sure yet if that makes things better or worse.
But as the sun sets through the grimy glass, painting everything in shades of gold and rose, I realize I want to find out.
Chapter 12 - Misha
