I was surprised to find Miko gone this morning—and no guard to hinder my movement, though Chastity did warn me to stay within the estate’s boundary lines.
My first thought was to visit Svetlana.
I’ve been getting daily updates on her well-being since the raid, but she wasn’t at the wedding, and my need to see her has been growing to a level of desperation.
Her greeting when I knocked on the door of her suite was one for the books. “Nice to know you haven’t completely forgotten about this old hag,” she said to me before rolling out into the hall. “Now quick, let’s make a break for it before anyone sees.”
She rolled right to the elevator that carries her down to the ground floor that opens out to the back garden, and promptlyplaced herself before the French double doors so I could open them and wheel her out.
No one can make me smile like Pyotr’s great-grandmother.
At ninety-seven, she’s still as full of spit and vinegar as I hope to be when I’m half her age—if I have the privilege of getting that old.
And she’s packed with a wisdom that I find comforting, especially at times when I didn’t know how I would survive living under Pyotr’s roof for a day longer.
“How have you been,babushka?” I ask as I roll her across the bumpy gravel path.
Why she loves to spend time in the garden so much when the jostling rumble of her wheelchair can’t be comfortable, I just don’t understand. But I’ve never been able to deny her anything, and I love our walks together.
“Me? Oh, old and rickety and arthritic, but I’m still here, aren’t I?” she quips, making me laugh.
“I meant, how have the Chiaroscuro brothers been treating you,” I add more gently, anxious about the kind of treatment she might have been receiving while I was locked up in my room.
“Oh, that. One patriarch is much like the next to me, anymore. I’ve just been keeping to my room, and Chastity has been taking good care of me. It’s better to keep your head down, you know,” she says, nodding sagely. “Besides, these power-hungry men don’t have the time of day to waste on an old lady like me. That’s probably for the best, under the circumstances. Though I must say, from what I’ve seen, Mikail seems to have come up just fine—despite having to find his own way in this world. I can’tsay the same for his younger brother, who always did take after their father—that man had a devil inside him, and the alcohol certainly didn’t help.”
Frowning, I consider Svetlana’s words for a moment. As sharp as she might be intellectually, I’ve noticed, on occasion, a hint of senility creeping into her thoughts.
The doctor assured me her prognosis would progress with her age—gradually, if we’re lucky.
Most of the time, she seems quite lucid, but every now and then, it makes my heart sink when she says something I can’t make sense of.
Like who Mikail might be, for example. And why she would bring him up now, of all times.
But before I can ask, Svetlana’s waving her comment away. “Would you listen to me? It’s not wise to speak ill of the dead, now is it?” Turning her head to the left, she follows the old Russian superstition of spitting three times over her shoulder to ward off the bad energy she’s invited.
Biting back a smile, I bring her to a stop beside one of the stone benches lining the garden walkway. Then I walk around her to take a seat so I can be at eye level. “I missed you at the wedding,” I say, taking her hands in mine.
“Pah,” she scoffs. “No one wanted an old woman like me there anyway.”
“I got worried when I didn’t see you,” I admit, meeting her milky, cataract-clouded gaze.
“Worried? For me? Don’t be silly. I just wasn’t about to insult my great-grandson’s memory by attending some fancy celebration—not when his body’s still warm.”
It’s not a reprimand, but Svetlana’s words still hit me like a physical blow.
Because I didn’t just attend the wedding—I was the one getting married mere days after Pyotr was murdered.
And not to just any man, I married the man who killed him, brutally and without mercy.
“Can you ever forgive me,babushka?” I ask, my voice hitching.
Svetlana cocks her head, one gnarled hand reaching out to cup my cheek. “For what,vnuchenka?”
“Well… it was my wedding,” I explain, wondering if perhaps Svetlana didn’t understand what was happening—or maybe she’d forgotten.
Svetlana leans back in her wheelchair to study me. “So I heard. But then, you didn’t have much say in the first wedding, either, did you?” she points out, one snowy eyebrow climbing up her liver-spotted forehead.
The tight knot of anxiety in my chest eases under her knowing gaze.
