The afternoon is cold but clear, with pale sunlight spread over the back garden and the trees moving softly in the wind. A table has been set near the stone terrace, close enough to the house that the guards don’t look tense, far enough that I can pretend we’re not being watched.
There’s grilled fish, potatoes, warm bread, a salad I mostly ignore, and a bowl of strawberries that Yaromir keeps pushing toward me without saying anything.
“I’m capable of feeding myself,” I tell him.
He cuts into his fish. “I know.”
“Then why do you keep moving food closer?”
“Because you keep eating the strawberries and pretending you aren’t.”
I look down. There are only three left.
I glare at him. “You count fruit now?”
“I count many things.”
“That sounds threatening.”
“It usually is.”
I shouldn’t smile. I do anyway.
The last few weeks have done strange things to us.
Not made us easy. Nothing about Yaromir is easy. He still has men at the gates. He still disappears for hours into meetings that leave his face colder when he returns. He still says no when I ask to leave the estate, though now he explains why before I have to fight it out of him.
But he also brings apples to the stables because he knows I want to see Buran. He lets me ride even when every line of his body says he wants to pull me down and put me somewhere safer. He sleeps with one arm around me like a man who has never been taught how to hold something gently but is learning through stubbornness alone.
And sometimes, like now, he sits across from me in the weak sun and looks almost peaceful.
His phone sits beside his plate, screen down. Mine is near my glass. When it buzzes, both of us look at it.
My father’s name lights up the screen.
The moment breaks.
Yaromir’s eyes move from the phone to me. I pick it up and read the text before he can say anything.
Anya. I need your help. Please call me.
I stare at the message until the words blur slightly.
Help. Of course.
Not how are you. Not can we talk. Not I’m sorry.
Help.
Something cold settles in my stomach.
I’ve barely thought about my father over the last few weeks, and I feel guilty for that for one second before anger replaces it. I spent years thinking about him. Worrying about his moods, his debts, his expectations, his disappointments. I spent my whole life being useful to him in one way or another.
For the first time, I stopped.
And now he wants money again.
Because that’s what this is. It has to be.
