I look toward the garden, where the trees cast thin shadows across the lawn. “Do you think she’ll come back?”
“Yes.”
“You sound certain.”
“She rarely leaves a wound alone.”
I turn back to him. “Am I the wound?”
His eyes hold mine. “No.”
The answer comes too quickly to be polite. Too firmly to be meaningless. For some reason, it warms me.
Then his phone rings. Whatever softness was in his face disappears before he even picks it up. He listens for less than ten seconds, then stands. “I have to go.”
I try not to show my disappointment. “Work?”
“Yes.”
“Dangerous work?”
His mouth tightens. “Not today.”
“That’s a vague answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
He comes around the table and bends to kiss my forehead.
The gesture still surprises me. It’s too domestic for him. Too quiet. Too much like something a husband does when leaving his wife after lunch, instead of a mafia boss leaving a guarded estate to deal with men who sometimes try to kill him.
I catch his wrist before he steps away. “Come back.”
His gaze drops to my hand, then returns to my face. “I will.”
Then he leaves.
For a while, I stay outside after he’s gone. I finish the strawberries. Then I feel ridiculous and eat the last piece of bread too, mostly because no one is there to watch me pretend I am above appetite.
The afternoon stretches.
I walk to the stables, but Buran is in a mood and pins his ears back when I approach without Yaromir. I tell him he’s a traitor. He ignores me.
By the time I return to the house, I feel restless in a way I can’t explain. My body is tired, but my mind will not settle. I try to read in the library. The same paragraph stares back at me four times. I try to look through fabric samples for the new dresses. Every shade annoys me.
Then, standing in front of the wardrobe in Yaromir’s room, I realize something.
My period is late.
The thought is so sudden and clear that I sit down on the bed.
No.
I count the days in my head. Then again.
Then once more, slower.
My mouth goes dry. It could be stress. Of course it could. In the last month, I have run from a wedding, hidden in a city, worked in a kitchen, almost been taken by a man in a club, married Yaromir, fought with his family, been dragged into a war, and learned more about my own body than I knew in twenty-two years.
