His mother hears it too.
“He thinks I do not notice when he is frightened,” she says quietly.
I look toward the doors. “He doesn’t seem like someone who frightens easily.”
“No,” she says. “He frightens deeply.”
That sits between us for a moment.
Then she turns her gaze on me, gentle and far too direct. “And you?”
I try for lightness. “I mostly just throw up and make bad decisions.”
Her smile deepens. “Yes. I noticed.”
I should feel cornered by how much she sees.
Instead, I feel oddly... understood.
His mother presses a small glass jar into my hand before breakfast ends. Inside are salted tamarind strips dusted with chili and sugar.
I look at them, then at her. “What is this?”
“This one is for your weird cravings.” She winks at me.
I open the jar, suspicious, and try one.
The reaction is immediate. My whole mouth wakes up. Sour, spicy, salty, sweet all at once. “Oh my God.”
She smiles. “There we are.”
I clutch the jar to my chest like a dragon with treasure. “I would actually fight someone for these.”
“Yes,” she says. “Now you sound pregnant.”
I spend the rest of breakfast picking at toast and aggressively munching tamarind strips while pretending I do not notice how comforting it is to be looked after by a woman who understands exactly how irrational my body has become.
Later, after she gets tired and one of the staff gently insists she rest, I head back upstairs with the jar in one hand and a glass of water in the other.
The house is too quiet.
Big houses always are. Quiet in a way that makes every footstep feel observed even when no one is there. Sunlight cuts throughthe upper hall in long clean bands. The air smells faintly of polished wood and expensive nothing.
I’m halfway to my room when he steps out of the study.
Aleksei.
He stops when he sees me. I stop because my body apparently still reacts to him before my brain gets a vote.
We look at each other across the hallway.
He’s taken off his jacket, sleeves rolled up now, tie gone again, the top two buttons of his shirt undone. He looks less like a warlord this morning and more like a man who slept too little and carries too much in his jaw.
Annoyingly attractive, in other words.
“What?” I say, because I know if I don’t start this with irritation, I’ll start it somewhere worse.
He takes one step toward me. “We need to talk.”
