Page 45 of The King's Pawn
Yes. I did.
The admission lands in my mind with a dull finality that should have ended the matter entirely. It should have closed the door on doubt, on reflection, on anything that resembles remorse. I have dealt those same fates to plenty of others in different forms with different faces attached to them. Death is not foreign to me. It has followed me like a shadow since I was old enough to understand that survival in this world is a zero-sum game.
Her mother’s death should have been simple.
It usually is.
I have delivered that same sentencing more times than I care to count. I have done it cleanly, efficiently, sometimes personally, sometimes through intermediaries. I have signed orders that carried further-reaching consequences than a single life extinguished in a quiet moment. Entire bloodlines have ended because I decided they were inconvenient, and I have never lost sleep over it.
Not like this.
I drag a hand over my face and exhale through my fingers, pressing my palm briefly to my eyes as if that might scrub the memory clean. It doesn’t. Nothing does.
The image of Alina standing in my study, pressed to the wall, shaking and furious and broken all at once, is carved into me now. I had told her the truth because lies would have insulted her intelligence.
Up until this point, I had severely underestimated the cost of honesty.
Since then, she hasn’t come out of her room once. She has refused every meal that has been sent up to her, refuses to answer when anyone knocks to escort her around the estate to coax her out of her room. Even the guards have begun to tread carefully outside her room at night when they guard it.
I had figured giving her space would help in stabilizing her. That had been the intention, anyway. Distance, quiet, time to process are the tools I have seen work on men twice her age when confronted with unbearable truths.
I assumed it would work for her too.
Instead, it seems to have unraveled her further.
And me with her.
I find myself checking the CCTV feeds on my tablet more often than I care to ever admit. I tell myself it is habit at this point, a routine that has become necessary to ensure she remains unharmed in her current state.
But… deep down, I know that is not why I keep watching. It is because every time the camera flicks to her room, I find my chest growing a little tighter at the sight of her. She looks… wounded. There is no other word for it.
She spends hours sitting in the same place, staring at nothing, clutching that photograph like it is the last piece of her old life she recognizes.
I tell myself this will pass.
I tell myself she will harden the way everyone eventually does. That anger will replace grief and that fury will give her something solid to stand on again. I tell myself that if she hatesme enough, it will be easier. Hatred is predictable. Hatred can be managed.
But when I bring up the feeds again on my tablet for thenthtime that day, something is different. She isn’t sitting on the bed this time. She’s pacing the length of her room.
The realization tightens something in my chest before I can smoother it, threading itself through me like a hook.
Concern.
The word forms, fully formed and undeniable, and I hate it almost as much as I recognize it.
I tap through the camera angles with practiced efficiency, fingers moving on instinct even as my attention sharpens. Wide shot first. The full scope of her room, cream walls washed in dim light, the four-poster bed untouched. Then the tighter angle by the window that looks over the foot of the bed. Then the corner shot near the bathroom door, partially obscured by the molding.
She crosses through all of them.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Her arms are wrapped tightly around herself, fingers digging into the fabric at her sides as if she’s trying to physically hold herself together. Her movements aren’t the way they usually are when she’s angry or defiant. They’re erratic and uneven.
Behind me, the wind howls against my windows, rattling the glass hard enough that even through reinforced glass, I can hear it. Shadows strobe across her walls as the exterior lights flicker, that same wind battering against her side of the estate too.
She flinches. Her shoulders jerk upward, her head snapping toward the sound coming from the windows as if she’s expecting something worse to follow. She stumbles back a step toward her bed, her chest visibly hitching even through the silent feed. One hand flies up to her chest, fingers curling into the fabric of her night shirt.
