Page 161

He scowls at me, but his fingers wrap around the wood.

I lean over his back, wrapping my arms around him from behind. Ilya’s breath hitches as my larger hand closes over his right hand, covering his fingers. My other arm braces against the frame of the easel, caging him.

“Breathe,” I whisper, pressing my mouth to the curve behind his ear. “Loosen your grip.”

I loosen his rigid fingers, shifting his grip further back along the shaft so the lead has room to sweep. Ilya shudders, leaning his head back until his hair brushes the hollow of my throat.

“Okay,” he murmurs, his voice sounding so small. He is unfairly cute right now.

“Now what?”

I guide his hand to the center of the page. Ilya, incapable of doing anything halfway, immediately presses down with too much force and nearly tears through the grain, leaving a pitch-black gouge across the white surface.

“That looks like a dead spider,” he says flatly. “I told you. I’m terrible. Let’s burn it.”

“It’s not a dead spider,” I say, brushing my lips against his cheek, smiling at the heat blooming under his skin. I gently guide his wrist in a series of swirling curves, pulling gray lines out of the dark center. Together, our hands dance across the paper, turning the black scar into the gnarled bark of a sweeping tree.

Ilya watches the transformation. His body slowly stops resisting mine, melting entirely against my chest, allowing my fingers to direct every sweep and stroke.

“Now,” I say quietly, “what sits under the tree?”

“A bomb,” Ilya says instantly.

“Try again, prince.”

“I don’t know. Something stupid. People.”

“What kind of people?”

“Just… two kids.”

“Alright,” I whisper, resting my chin over the curve of his shoulder. “Show me.”

I keep my hand light over his, giving him just enough support to balance the weight of the pencil without dictating his strokes. Ilya hesitates, then he presses the graphite down beneath the sprawling arch of the branches.

First, he draws the rough outline of a taller boy standing in front, angled as if shielding what lies beside him. Next to him, Ilya sketches a smaller figure, his tongue poking out just barely past his front teeth as he adds the clumsy details: messy tufts of hair on the smaller one, and then a tentative line where their hands meet in the middle, their fingers tightly intertwined.

“They look like two deformed potatoes,” he mutters as he makes a move to drop the pencil. “It’s hideous. Give me the eraser.”

“Don’t touch it,” I say softly, my fingers closing over his to keep him from smudging the page. “It’s not hideous.”

“Kento, look at the head on the little one. It looks like it was hit by a truck—”

“It’s perfect,” I murmur, feeling the violent flutter of his pulse under my mouth.

Ilya lets out a weak scoff, though he leans back into my embrace, his hands coming up to cover my forearms where they rest over his stomach.

“It’s completely atrocious,” he says, though his eyes never leave the paper, shining with pride. “If Dimitri saw this, he’d laugh until his lungs collapsed.”

“Dimitri doesn’t get to see it,” I say, kissing the side of his jaw. “It stays here.”

“Where no one can witness my shame.”

“Where only I can look at it.”

I turn him around on the stool so he is facing me.

“You can come here whenever you want, prince,” I tell him, cupping his face in both of my hands, letting my thumbs stroke over the high crests of his cheekbones.