His mouth twitches, but before he can answer, his phone starts vibrating in his pocket. He checks the screen and his face changes just slightly. Business. Problems. War. Whatever dark machine is always moving behind his eyes.
He looks back at me. “Can you walk downstairs?”
I lift a brow. “I am pregnant, not ornamental.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“Yes,” I say. “I can walk downstairs.”
“Good.”
He lingers for half a second like he wants to say something else, then just nods and leaves the room with the phone already at his ear.
Ten minutes later I’m outside on the back terrace under a pale morning sun, wrapped in a light shawl one of the staff pressed into my hands before I could protest. Breakfast is set on a long table overlooking the garden. Not formal. Not intimidating. Just fruit, tea, toast, eggs, and a basket of things that smell too rich for my current state.
His mother is already there.
She looks better than she did in the hospital, though still too thin, still washed out around the edges. But the air seems to help her, and the sight of her outside, in a soft blue robe with a blanket over her knees, makes her seem more like a person and less like a patient.
She smiles when she sees me. “You survived my son.”
“Barely.”
“Good. That means your instincts are intact.”
I laugh before I can stop myself and lower myself carefully into the chair beside her.
She watches the plate one of the staff sets in front of me. Plain toast, sliced apple, more grapes.
“Aleksei told them?” I ask.
“He told me. I told them. He would have tried to feed you like a soldier with a wound.”
That is so accurate I nearly smile into my tea.
For a little while we eat in companionable quiet. Or rather, she eats and I move things around my plate while trying not to invite death by scrambled eggs.
Then she says, “When I was pregnant with him, I wanted pickled plums and black pepper on everything.”
I blink. “That is revolting.”
“Yes.” She smiles. “And yet I would have murdered for it.”
That pulls a laugh out of me. “Mine is ice. Not even fancy cravings. Just ice. And sour candy. And one week where I nearly cried because I wanted instant noodles with lime and hot sauce.”
She looks delighted. “Good. Ugly cravings are honest ones.”
“That is a terrible philosophy.”
“It is motherhood.”
I smile despite myself.
We sit there with the morning light on the table and talk.
It is disarming. And kind. And because of that, I relax more than I mean to.
Aleksei is gone longer than I expected, pacing somewhere inside the house with his phone pressed to his ear, his voice drifting in and out when the terrace doors open. Even from a distance I can hear the tension in it.
