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My peripheral vision dissolves. The entire fucking world contracts to the circumference of his arm. Someone kept hurting him. Repeatedly enough that his body has become a palimpsest of unfinished healing. I knew it was bad. I didn’t know it was this bad.

The music keeps playing. Someone near the bar laughs too loudly. Glass catches chandelier light and throws it in broken pieces across the walls. A girl is saying something somewhere to my left, Dimitri’s hand is still wrapped around Ilya’s wrist, and none of it is registering because all I can see is his bruises.

His green eyes catch mine from across the room. I have always loved his eyes. That particular shade of green has become so intimately familiar to me that I could probably reconstruct it from memory if the entire world went colorless tomorrow.

I know every language they speak. I know how the color darkens when he is angry and how it seems almost luminous when something genuinely amuses him. I know the microscopic narrowing that precedes suspicion, the vicious little gleam that appears approximately three seconds before he says something designed specifically to ruin my day. I thought I knew every permutation of Ilya Solovyov’s gaze. But the look he gives me now belongs to no language I know.

Dimitri says something, and Alexei follows, but Ilya doesn’t react to either of them. Whatever they’re saying isn’t reaching him. His attention stays fixed on me.

He jerks his arm out of Dimitri’s grip, mutters something I can’t make out, and turns before anyone can stop him. I’m already moving. By the time I reach the hall, the side door is swinging shut behind him. I push through it and step outside.

Dimitri had the grounds dressed up for Rei’s birthday. Strings of warm lights are wound through the trees and along the railings. Ilya is halfway down the path leading toward the trees.

He’s moving fast, one hand tugging uselessly at his sleeve like fabric can undo what I’ve already seen. It can’t. That image is already engraved into my mind. I could close my eyes right now and see every detail all over again. Whatever he does from this point forward, I know I’ll never be able to unsee it.

“Ilya.” The gravel crunches under my shoes. The lights thin as we get farther from the house, swallowed gradually by darker branches and the black shape of the forest surrounding the estate.

“Ilya, stop.”

He does.

Not willingly. More like the command catches in his spine before he can outrun it. He freezes, then he turns.

Something in my chest drops when I look at him. Not because he looks weak. Ilya would probably stab me for suggesting that. He looks furious. Defensive. Ready to bite my fucking head off if I get any closer. But I’ve known him too long to be fooled by anger. I can see what’s underneath it, and knowing he’s been carrying that alone makes me feel violently helpless.

How can I help him? I spent years trying to get close to him, fighting for every inch he was willing to give me, yet I failed to protect him.

My heart twists. I want to take it out of my chest and lay it at his feet as an apology for letting that pain bloom on his body.

“Go away.”

“Stop pushing me away.”

He laughs, brittle and mean. “Go bother someone else. I’m sure there’s another person here who needs your fucking attention.”

“I saw you.”

“And? Congratulations. You have eyes. Want a medal?”

I raise my voice, not enough to shout, but with enough force to cut straight through the walls he’s trying to throw up between us. “Stop pretending, Ilya. Tell me what’s happening.” He flinches. It’s barely noticeable, but I catch it, and the second I do, I fucking hate myself for raising my voice at him. After everything he’s already been through, the last thing he needs is another person making him brace for impact. Why the fuck do I feel like I’m doing everything wrong? My soul feels like it’s shaking inside my body, and I don’t know what the right thing is anymore. Do I touch him? Do I back away? Do I ask questions? Do I shut the fuck up and just stay? I don’t know. I don’t know what he needs from me, and the uncertainty is fucking killing me.

I press my lips together, forcing the anger down before I speak again. When I finally do, my voice is as gentle as I can make it. “Just tell me who hurt you, love.”

The knife lands against my throat before I register the draw. “Stop calling me that.” His voice is shaking as much as the blade. “Stop looking at me like that. Stop making me feel like this. Why can’t you just stay away—”

I put both hands on his waist and pull him in, gently, because I don’t know who hurt him, but I want him to learn that my hands will never be something he has to fear.

The knife against my throat means nothing. He could drive it deeper, and I wouldn’t move. If he needs something to destroy, let it be me. “Feel like what, my prince?”

His breath hitches against my chest. I feel it travel up through the blade and into the hand holding it.

I watch the truth claw at him from the inside, see it rise into his throat only to be strangled by fear before it ever reaches his mouth. His eyes empty, the light in them extinguishing, until all that’s left is a mask. “I hate you.” Again. “I hate you.” Again. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.” Over and over, until the sentence loses its shape and becomes a spell he’s desperately trying to cast over himself. “Do you understand?” he chokes out. “That’s what I fucking feel.” I hold his gaze as though he’s a dying star, still burning even as the darkness tries to swallow every last trace of him. I won’t let it.

“Tell me in Russian.”

“What?”

“Tell me how much you hate me in Russian.”