I find her on the balcony of her room, arms wrapped tightly around herself as a soft breeze cuts through the yard. She’s wearing one of the sweaters we left for her, or rather, my staff picked out for her after I’d given them her measurements. Perhaps that had been a step too deep into these strange feelings strangling me, but I push that aside for now.
“We’re going out,” I say.
She jumps and whips around to face me, leaning back just enough that her hip slams into the railing. She nearly pitches back and has to catch herself on it, fingers curling around the banister like a life line. “What?”
“To lunch. I’m taking you out.”
Her eyes narrow instantly. “Why?”
“To feed you. Is that a problem?”
She scoffs and looks away from me to train her eyes down at the frost covered lawn beneath the balcony. It takes her a long moment to think, but she finally mutters a quiet, “Fine. Whatever. I’m starving anyway.”
Well. That’s progress, at least.
The restaurant is one I frequent when I want to disappear in plain sight. Upscale, quiet, designed with a kind of mutedopulence that doesn’t demand attention. Gray walls with frosted windows to keep lingering eyes out. Soft lighting and tables spaced far enough apart to muffle important conversations.
I clock the exits on instinct. Two staff doors, one fire stair, a back corridor to an alley I have soldiers stationed at on the off-chance some idiot decides a drive-by here would be a good idea. Our people are present without being seen. The owner knows to keep a perimeter without hovering.
To anyone else, we simply look like two colleagues on a late lunch.
Ivy sits across from me and doesn’t speak until the waiter comes. Her fingers twitch around the linen napkin in her hands. Her expression is wary but she watches me with a fixed expression that tells me she’s refusing to show me she’s afraid.
Honestly, I truly admire her.
She’s a forced to be reckoned with.
I let her eat in peace when the food hits our table. Silence works better than any threat. Pressure makes people defensive. Quiet makes them reveal themselves.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch her. The rigid line of her shoulders softens by degrees. Each sip of her soup brings a hint of color back to her cheeks. The atmosphere here wraps around her, easing her until I can see the fight in her muscles relax just enough for hunger to win.
She doesn’t speak. Neither do I, but that’s fine. It gives me the chance to study her without being obvious about it. She holds her spoon with the careful poise of someone raised to mind her manners, but she eats like she hasn’t had a proper meal in days.
From nerves or a punishment served to her by Sergei?
By the time she’s halfway through her risotto, I lean back in my chair and speak. “Why’d you take the job?”
Her fork stills. She blinks, eyes darting up from her plate to mine, caught off guard. “What?”
“With Sergei,” I clarify. “Was it the prestige? The travel?”
She sets her fork down with a soft clink and levels me with a look. “Is this another interrogation?”
I shake my head once. “This is merely lunch, Ivy. Nothing more.”
For a second, she just studies me. Her eyes narrow, searching mine, trying to pierce through the mask I show the world. Most people break under that kind of tension—they avert their gaze, shift in their seat, scramble to fill the silence because the attention is too much.
I let her look. Iwanther to. Let her see what she thinks she believes is there, let her draw her own conclusions to the kind of person she’s already decided I am. Let her imagine the shape of the monster sitting across the table and decide if she can outrun it even though we both know she can’t.
Finally, she exhales, the fight leaking out of her in increments. Her shoulders slump just a fraction. “You really want to know?”
“I wouldn’t be wasting my breath asking if I didn’t.” My tone is dry.
Her gaze drops back to the plate. She picks up her fork, stabs at a piece of mushroom with far more force than necessary. When she speaks again, it’s flat and unembellished. “Money. That’s it.”
The simplicity of it throws me more than I expect.
I expected… something else. Something shallow, a speech about adventure and wanderlust. About how she wanted to travel, to make a difference, to shape the lives of children in some noble white-savior way. A dramatic story about cultural immersion and personal growth, the kind of fluff people fill up their resumes with when they’ve done nothing else worth mentioning.
