His breathing changes. His hand flexes once on the table. He’s imagining reaching for me. He’s imagining worse. Better. Both.
“Where is the child?” he asks. The words vibrate through the air between us.
“She’s hidden,” I say. “Safe, until I know I can bring her out.”
His stare locks on mine. His voice drops lower, darker, the way it did when he used to murmur instructions against my throat.
“And how will you know?” he asks.
To that, I have no answer. I shake my head, eyelids drooping. He stays still a moment longer. “I’ve got to go, Raina, but this is far from over.”
A draft slipsunder the door, cold brushing my bare ankles. I realize I have kicked off my boots without thinking. My toes curl into the rug and my whole body shivers, like it is finally catching up. I undress on autopilot, layer by layer, until I'm down to a thin shirt and underwear. The scar on my left wrist looks pale in this light. I catch my reflection in the mirror above the dresser. Hollow cheeks. Tired eyes. Hair escaping the low knot at the nape of my neck.
“You did this,” I tell the girl in the glass. “You chose this.” The irony tastes bitter in my mouth.
I slide under the covers. My eyes burn, but sleep doesn’t come quickly. When it does, it is heavy and full of half-formed images, black boxes and small hands, blood on snow. At some point, the dark behind the curtains begins to thin. My body floats somewhere between dreams and waking.
That’s when the alarms go off.
The sound slams through the room, a harsh, rising wail that vibrates in my teeth. Red light flashes at the ceiling corners,washing the walls in pulses of color. My heart slams against my ribs. I yank the covers back and stumble to the door, bare feet hitting the cold floor.
“Hello?” I shout, voice rough. “What is happening?”
No answer.
I press my ear to the door. Nothing. No muffled curse, no scrape of boots, no rush of bodies moving to intercept a threat. I flick the latch and crack the door an inch, just enough to peer through. The handle turns easily when I try it. Someone left the door open, but why?
The corridor outside is empty.
Both posts are deserted. The guards outside my room have vanished.
4
SERGEI
The alarm that means someone is inside my house tears me out of my chair. That sound—sharp, rising pulses that catch under the skin—is wired for only two internal conditions—fire or breach. The perimeter, for all that matters, still holds.
Dawn breaks somewhere in the east, far from the west wing office where I’m already standing. The siren drives down the corridor while I grab my gun and push through the door. Red light strobes along the walls. I take the stairs two at a time. A storm has gathered outside, its roar threading beneath the alarm. The house, my house, has a different voice when it’s afraid.
“Report,” I crack into the radio clipped at my belt.
Static breathes back at me, then a voice.
“East guest floor,” Kirill answers, breath ragged. “Alert at suite twelve. Two guards not responding. Cameras are cycling on that sector.”
Suite twelve. Raina.
“Thermal?” I ask.
“Glitch on that sector,” he says. “Someone looped half the feed before the alarm tripped. We’re working on it.”
Inside job. Or someone good enough to ghost us from outside.
My chest clenches and I move faster. A maid presses herself against the wall to let me pass, her eyes wide, her hands clutching fresh linen. The air gets hotter as I near the east wing, the radiators working against the cold seeping through old stone. The east corridor is narrower, lined with closed doors and paintings that mean nothing compared to the men who are supposed to be standing outside one of them. Alarm lights flash, washing everything in red.
Two guards should be at her room.
There’s no one.
