Page 92 of The King's Pawn
I expected someone who would relish this moment. Someone who would see me kneeling metaphorically at his feet and immediately tighten the knife at Sasha’s throat because he could. But… Nikolai Malyshko isn’t leaning forward with bloodlust in his eyes.
It’s the exact opposite, actually.
His attention feels surgical, peeling back layers I didn’t even realize I was presenting to him. He isn’t staring at me like prey. He’s taking me in like I’m a variable he never accounted for, a problem introduced into a system that had been functioning just fine until now.
I hadn’t come here expecting mercy.
Not really.
Begging for Sasha’s life had always felt like a long shot. A reckless, desperate gamble born from fear and something far more dangerous. I knew exactly what I was doing when I stepped through those gates. I knew that once I crossed this threshold, there was no version of this where I walked out untouched.
But I’d come anyway.
If there were even the smallest chance, one sliver of possibility, that I could keep Sasha alive and keep his family intact, keep the Iron Pact from tearing him apart for choosing me, then I would take it.
I would doanything.
“You know,” he finally says, “people often come to me begging for their lives. You are the first to come begging for someone else’s.”
For a moment, I don’t know what to do with that.
Whatdoyou say to that?
I suppose it makes sense. In their world, someone like me shouldn’t exist at all. I’m a flaw in the design. A miscalculation. A softness that has no business standing upright in rooms where men gamble lives like poker chips and call it strategy.
I wasn’t raised for this. I wasn’t meant for it. And yet here I am, anyway, offering myself up because I refuse to let someone else pay the price.
Maybe allowing myself to get involved with him doomed me from the beginning. Maybe the moment I stopped seeing him as only a monster and started seeing the man beneath the steel, I sealed my fate.
But would I go back if I could?
No. I wouldn’t.
If that makes me foolish, so be it. I’ve already learned what happens when people live their lives purely by logic and survival. They rot from the inside out. They turn love into leverage and grief into justification.
“I find you to be an interesting kind of problem, Alina,” Nikolai continues, settling deeper into the couch, one ankle crossing over the other with unsettling ease.
The wordproblemshould frighten me more than it does. I hesitate before speaking, weighing every possible consequence of opening my mouth again. “And why is that?”
His gaze sharpens. “Because I am… surprised you care for him in that way.”
Something twists in my chest at the simplicity of the statement. My brows knit together. “Do you think he’s incapable of having someone love him?”
The bemused expression returns, but this time, there’s something layered beneath it. Not mockery or disbelief. Something older, more tired. “We all are.”
I take a small step forward. “I don’t think that’s true. I think everyone is capable of love.”
For the first time since I walked into this room, Nikolai’s lips part slightly but no words come out. Whatever he sees in me, whether it’s naivete or defiance or sincerity, it changes him. The calculation drains away along with the interest.
In its place, something rarer surfaces.
Sorrow.
It settles into the lines of his face like a shadow he’s learned to live with. Like a truth he’s long since accepted but has never forgiven. It’s so unexpected that it nearly steals my breath. For a split second, I almost ask himwhy.
The question sits right on the tip of my tongue.
It would be so easy to push, to try and dig into him and back the polished surface and find the scars hiding beneath it. To ask who I remind him of. Who once stood where I am now, hopeful or foolish or brave enough to believe love could survive in a world like this, and met their tragic end.
