Page 49 of The King's Pawn
It makes no sense.
She knows what I’ve done. She knows who I am—whatI am. She looked me in the eyes and confirmed I’d killed her mother, spat the words at me like poison, a curse meant to burn its way into my skin.
And still, somewhere between the storm upsetting her and her sobbing against my chest, her body had trusted mine on instinct. Trusted the man who destroyed her life more completely than her father, all while leaving me to hold her together when everything else was falling apart around her.
I should have left her there.
That is the truth I keep circling inside me.
I should have let her drown in her grief, forced her to endure it alone until it sharpened her into a person who would do anything to survive. That is how it works. That is how it hasalwaysworks. Pain either destroys you or it tempers you into something harder, colder, and more dangerous than your enemies could ever understand.
That is how it happened to me.
But… instead, I held her until her breathing slowed. Until the violent tremors in her body faded into something softer. Until her heartbeat steadied against my chest, no longer racing like it was trying to outrun memory itself.
Now daylight crawls across the floor of my study in pale stripes, catching on the edge of the desk, the legs of the chair, the map on the wall that charts my empire and its bloodshed. The memory of her weight against me sits on my skin like a bruise, tender and persistent and impossible to ignore.
I take a sip of coffee and barely taste it.
What do I do now?
There’s a knock at the door.
It’s one sharp rap with no waiting afterward, no polite pause for permission to come in before the door is already swinging open. I don’t bother to answer, anyway.
Only one man walks into this room without it.
Roman steps inside and closes the door behind him. My second. My right hand. He’s been at my side long enough to read the shifts in my mood better than most people read the weather. Sometimes even better than my own sister. He knows when to speak, when to wait, and when to bring bad news without dressing it up.
It seems this is one of those times.
His gaze flicks briefly over the desk, taking in the piles of unfinished paperwork, the untouched coffee, the faint indentation left by my body in the chair from before I gotup to pace. He doesn’t comment on any of it but I catch the assessment all the same. There’s a manila folder tucked beneath his arm. It’s thick, which means it’s sensitive enough to be a matter that doesn't fit neatly into email or encrypted messages.
One brow lifts as he looks at me.
“You’re up early,” he says mildly. Then, after a beat, “Or did you never sleep?”
I ignore the question.
Instead, I nod toward the folder. “What is it?”
Roman steps closer to the desk and drops the folder onto it with a soft but deliberate thud. “Malyshko’s second called. There is a Pact meeting in an hour.”
I don’t react outwardly, but something tightens beneath my ribs. It isn’t anticipation, exactly, but close to it.
Roman continues, his tone careful. “From what I gathered, a decision has already been made regarding the most recent bombing. He wants you there to discuss what our next steps will be.”
I nearly sigh.
It isn’t unheard of for Nikolai to make decisions without consulting the rest of us. He has never pretended he cares for our opinions otherwise. His authority within the Iron Pact is absolute on paper, and most of the time, the rest of us are content enough to let him exercise it. Especially when the outcomes don’t touch us directly.
But this does.
Both bombings happened inmyterritory. That alone should have guaranteed me more than an after-the-fact summons.
Over the years, all four families have come to an understanding that any change affecting the stability of our districts would be decided collectively. It was less about fairness and more about respect. When one of us is blindsided, the rest feel the tremor eventually.
Nikolai doesn’t technically need our approval. He never has. But there is a difference between leadership and disregard, and this feels dangerously close to the latter.
