Page 23 of Reign
“You’re asking the wrong questions in the wrong environment,” he responds, and my gaze flicks to Maksim, where he watches me in the rearview mirror.
His shoulders are tight, but he knows something, which makes my temper go from simmering to dangerous in the space of a breath.
“Answer me,” I say.
Kai’s voice stays level when he says, “Not in the car.” And it only makes me angrier.
“I swear to fucking god, if you don’t speak right fucking now,” I say through gritted teeth before closing my eyes and tryingto rein in my anger. It won’t be helpful right now. I lean back against the leather seat, drumming my fingers against my knee once. “What did Arseniy tell you not to say?”
Kai doesn’t blink. “This has nothing to do with Arseniy.”
“That’s the first lie you’ve ever told me badly,” I say with a scoff. “You all do it. Him, you, Arseniy, when I asked him, Ruslan. I say ‘Vintermoor,’ and suddenly everyone gets selective amnesia. I ask about the lockdown, and I get reports with half the pages stripped. I ask why I remember West Hall A, but not why I ended up in the East Wing fucking recovering, and people act like the question itself is dangerous.”
Kai shakes his head. “Nikolaj—”
“Then I sit across from Vincenzo Vieri for the first time in eight years, and I realize the voice in my dreams is actually his, and evenherefuses to tell me why.”
His expression doesn’t change, but his pulse jumps once in his throat. “You went to his room,” he says, and it isn’t a question, either.
I ignore him. “So, I’ll ask again: what happened between us at Vintermoor?”
Kai looks away first. “A great deal happened at Vintermoor.”
I bark out a laugh. “You really want to die being clever?”
“Nikolaj—”
“No. You do not get to use that tone with me right now,” I say, shaking my head. “That’s how bad it is, huh? I thought you both looked surprised at the question, but now that I look at you properly, I can tell you’re both terrified of the answer.”
Kai inhales once through his nose, quietly and in control. “You and Vieri—”
He stops, and that’s worse than silence.
The pressure behind my right eye spikes, but I ignore it out of spite. “Finish the sentence.”
A flash hits me so hard I nearly miss the next turn of the car. Not a full memory, nothing that generous. Just sensation. My own hand knotted in black fabric. A rough wall at my back. Someone breathing hard against my mouth.
Then it’s gone.
Pain follows right after, stabbing through the same eye as always. I curl one hand into a fist against my thigh before either of them can see how hard it lands. The fact that it’s happening now, here, and from one fucking unfinished sentence tells me more than anything else could have.
Kai’s voice stays maddeningly even. “There are things you don’t know because you woke up missing them; that wasn’t your fault. But the version you woke with wasn’t neutral either. You came back with very particular pieces intact and others gone. Everyone around you had to decide what telling you the rest would actually do.”
“And you decided I should stay ignorant.”
“We decided not to weaponize your amnesia.”
“Against whom?”
They still don’t answer me. I drag a hand over my face, and it settles against my mouth as I laugh softly.
“No wonder he looked utterly fucking broken when I asked him, and it…” I trail off because I can’t finish that without sounding deranged.It crushed me.It made something in my chest turn over so hard that I felt sick. It made me want to put the knife down and pull him into my arms, and— “...none of it fucking made sense.”
“No,” Kai says quietly. “It probably wouldn’t.”
“Then explain it.”
He looks caught between loyalty and conscience, and I fucking hate it. “I can’t.”
