Page 61 of The King's Pawn
“You said she lived with her mother,” I continue, my hands curling around the sheets beneath me. “That you only see her once a year if you are lucky.”
Lev doesn’t move. His breathing has changed to grow shallow.
“Wouldn’t you want to see her? If you had the chance to? To make sure she’s okay, even if you know she’s being protected?” I ask quietly.
The silence that falls over us is heavy.
The estate feels impossibly far away all of a sudden, like this room exists in a vacuum where only the two of us remain. I remember the night he told me about her, how it had slipped out of him unguarded during one of my worst moments. I’d been kneeling over the toilet dry-heaving because my stomach was empty but my body refused to accept food. He’d stood there awkwardly and uncertain, then handed me a glass of water and said, almost to himself,I had a daughter once. She used to get sick like this too when she wouldn’t eat.
I don’t know why he trusted me with that.
Maybe out of pity, or guilt. Maybe because he saw something of her in me.
Using it against him now makes my chest ache with shame. It feels manipulative, cruel. But desperation has a way of shaping your morals into something unrecognizable, and I don’t have the luxury of being gentle anymore.
“I just need to talk to him. I need to hear the truth from him. Not Sasha.Him.” I say, my voice cracking despite my efforts.
Lev closes his eyes and lets out a long sigh. When he opens them again, something has shifted. Not fully. He’s still a man boundby orders, still a soldier first, but the edge of his resolve has softened. He looks tired in a way that has nothing to do with lack of sleep.
“You have no idea what you’re asking,” he murmurs.
“I do, and I’m asking anyway.”
He exhales, slow and resigned. “I can only guarantee you two hours. No more. If he finds out I helped you, we’ll both be dead. Do you understand?”
“I won’t let him,” I say immediately.
It’s a lie, or maybe just hope dressed up as confidence, but Lev nods like he wants to believe it too.
“Finish your food,” he says gruffly, already turning away. “We’ll leave once you’re done.”
The door closes behind him, and I sag back against the headboard, my heart hammering so hard it feels like it might tear through my chest.
I stare at the tray beside me.
For the first time in days, I pick up the spoon.
The city looksdifferent after weeks of captivity.
Gray buildings loom under a sky that seems permanently overcast, as if Moscow itself has decided not to bother pretending anymore to be happy. Traffic moves in steady veins through the streets, headlights flickering like distant stars. People cross intersections in thick coats and scarves, theirbreath puffing white into the air, their lives continuing with a stubborn indifference that feels almost cruel.
That normalcy stings more than I thought it would. It’s a reminder that I wasn’t taken from the world. I was simply removed from it, erased from the daily rhythm without so much as a ripple in the flow of time moving forward.
Lev drives in silence.
He takes the side streets, avoiding the main roads. The engine hums, low and steady, his hands locked tightly around the steering wheel. His jaw is clenched so hard, I can see the muscle jumping beneath his skin, a vein pulsing at his temple like a warning. Every red light makes him tense. I don’t know how he managed to talk the other guards into letting me leave the estate, but I’m not going to question anything.
Neither of us speaks.
What could we say?
I press my forehead lightly against the cold glass of the window and watch the skyline crawl closer block by block. The city I used to love slides past me in fragments—cafés where I studied between classes, the bookstore where I spent too much money on paperbacks over break, the park where my friends and I used to complain about our professors and our futures like any of it actually mattered.
I used to walk these streets freely. Now I’m being smuggled through them like contraband.
Everything feels warped.Distorted. Like looking back on a dream you once cherished, only to realize something rotten was always lurking beneath it. I don’t recognize my own reflectionwhen I catch it in the glass. I look paler, my eyes too old for my face.
When we turn, the familiar road unfurls ahead of us, narrow and lined with bare trees. My stomach clenches hard enough that I have to press a hand against it. This road has always led home, but now it feels like somewhere else entirely.
