Still terrifying.
I couldn't move. Couldn't look away. Could only watch him approach with the particular helplessness of someone who had run out of escape routes.
The door was right there. I could open it. Could run.
But run where? To whom? In a city I didn't understand, hunted by people who had photographed me at my most vulnerable, with no one to trust except the man with blood on his hands?
There was nowhere to go.
There was only Maksim.
And whatever came next.
He ducked back into the car. There was blood on his knuckles. Dark in the streetlight, almost black. Blood on his shirt—a spray pattern across the chest that I didn't want to think about too closely. A fine mist across his jaw that caught the light and gleamed like something precious.
Like something obscene.
I pressed myself against the passenger door as far as I could get. My hand found the handle without my permission, fingers curling around the cool metal, calculating distances and escape routes and survival odds.
Something flickered across his face. Pain, maybe. Or resignation. The particular expression of someone who had been expecting this. Who had been waiting for the moment I saw him clearly.
"Auralia."
His voice was gentle. The Daddy voice. The Lis voice.
But his hands were red.
"I know it’s scary. But you have to know that I'm not going to hurt you," he said. He hadn't moved. Stayed perfectly still, like I was a wild animal he didn't want to spook. Like he understood that any sudden movement would break me entirely. "I would never hurt you."
"You just—"
My voice didn't sound like my own. Too thin. Too high. The voice of someone smaller, someone more afraid, someone whohadn't spent three years building walls high enough to keep the world out.
"You killed him. You killed them both, you just—with your hands, you—"
The words wouldn't form properly. My brain kept stuttering on the memory of that sound. The sound of something essential being broken.
"They were going to take you."
His voice cracked on the last word. Actually cracked, like something was breaking inside him that he couldn't control. But he still didn't move. Still gave me space. Still let me press myself against the door like I was trying to phase through it and disappear.
"They were sent to use you against my family. To hurt you to get to me. I couldn't let that happen."
The words made sense. I understood them, intellectually. Someone had tried to kidnap me. Maksim had stopped them. The violence had been protection, not aggression. He'd killed two people to keep me safe.
My body didn't care about logic.
"Auralia." His voice again. Gentle. Patient. Waiting for me to come back to him. "Look at me."
I didn't want to. Looking at him meant seeing. Seeing meant acknowledging. Acknowledging meant accepting that this was real.
I looked anyway.
His eyes were anguished. Not blank anymore—the emptiness had dissolved the moment he'd gotten back in the car, replaced by something raw and desperate and terrifyingly human. He was in pain. Real pain. The kind of pain that came from watching someone you cared about recoil from your touch.
"I know what you saw," he said quietly. "I know what it looked like. And I know you're scared. You should be scared. But I need you to understand something."
I didn't answer. Didn't trust my voice.
