Vadim
Runa was six months old with two tiny teeth jutting from her gums. The last time I had felt her gums they had been hard with the pressure of them coming through. She was changing in small ways every day—gaining weight, her hair thickening, the way she tracked faces across a room becoming more deliberate, more knowing.
The baker Borden had procured for me had told me they kept their babies in the bed until they were toddlers. As much as I valued having Runa close, it had felt different getting Iskra alone last night. The west wing. The sounds she had tried to stifle. The marks I had left that she was carefully not drawing attention to this morning.
The deep red silk kept pulling my attention back to her.
The dress hugged every curve—discreet buttons running the length of the front, the skirt long, paired with a black cardigan that should have made it demure and somehow didn’t. She had entered without self-consciousness—or with complete indifference to being watched, which was worse.
Her perfume reached me before she did—that faint floral scent that was entirely hers, warm against the morning air, unchanged since the first time I had noticed it in a corridor almost two years ago.
The glass heart pendant rested above her breasts, catching the light when she moved. She rarely took it off. I had assumed it was sentimental—a piece she had brought from home, or purchased in Istanbul. Someone may have given it to her. As long as she wore my rings it shouldn’t matter.
It did.
Runa managed a few mouthfuls of porridge before she decided she was done and began returning it. When I tried again she pressed her lips together with the focused stubbornness of someone who had made a decision and was not revisiting it. The tilt of her chin. The look in her eye.
Her mother’s daughter entirely.
I cleaned her face and handed her back to Iskra, who passed her the pineapple core without comment. Runa set to work on it immediately—gnawing with the single-minded dedication of a small creature who had found her purpose. A fresh trail of drool made its way down to her bib. I shook my head.
It had been weeks. A full cycle had passed. She had to be pregnant by now.
I waited until Iskra finished her breakfast before I turned to Olya.
“Can you watch Runa for a little while?”
“Of course,” she said, drying her hands on her apron and moving to the table without hesitation.
Iskra looked up. The wariness was there—that sharp instinct of hers that I had underestimated once and would not underestimate again.
She had good senses.
“Follow me,” I said, pulling the basement key from my pocket.
??????
When her heels clicked on the resin floor they drew my attention to her slim ankles and the hint of calves that became exposed as she moved. She paused and half-turned, looking for direction.
“You know what Sergei did?” I asked, toying with the keys in my hand.
The wariness vanished. A flicker of sadness touched her eyes before she looked away—but her hand reached for the pendant at her throat.
“I do,” she said, her voice stronger than I had anticipated.
“I kept him. He is in that room,” I said, gesturing toward the cell.
Her head snapped up and she turned to face me fully.
“He was my son,” I said, pausing for a beat.“Our firstborn.”
She nodded.
“I keep him close,” she said, holding up the heart.“Soil from his grave.”
I stared at the glass heart—the darkness visible at its core. I had thought it was decorative. I had thought someone had given it to her.
“It seems we held on in different ways,” I murmured, and raised my hand and walked past her before I examined that thought any further.
