Page 135 of The Darkness is Calling

She turns again, taking her fluffy dress with her, and heads toward the middle of the living room, where she drops onto one of the couches.

She pulls off the glittering crown, leaving it beside her along with the veil attached to it.

“Are you planning to keep hiding things from me, or can you actually tell me the truth now?”

“I have always told you the truth,” I answer, approaching her slowly, step by step, like a predator. “You just never asked the right questions.”

Meanwhile, I pull my phone from my pocket and send a short message to the group chat with my brothers.

Me: Don’t disturb us.

That will stop them from barging here. In here, we are safe, and for the moment, I agree with the voices telling me to touch her, to taste her. To let the problems wait a little longer, because they aren’t going anywhere.

The problems won’t disappear, but my beloved wife has been away from me for ten days, and I need her.

“What happened that night? Why didn’t you make it, exactly? And who was the woman in the picture?”

I take one step, then another, stopping right in front of her.

I start with what I suspect bothers her most, judging by the tremor in her voice at the end.

“That woman is a whore from the club. She gave me a couple of blow jobs last year, then moved on to other soldiers. We never had a relationship, and I haven’t touched her since.”

I pause and slowly lower myself to my knees in front of the enormous layer of bloodstained feathers.

“I was getting ready to come to you when the street in front of our club was blocked by suspicious cars.”

I stroke the feathers with the tips of my stillgloved fingers.

“Outside, we were attacked,” I continue telling her, but my hands slide toward the edge of her dress and slowly slip beneath the ton of tulle. “A silent war, one meant not to draw the authorities’ attention, since most of the weapons had silencers and the area isn’t heavily populated. Later, I realized their plan all along: to keep us there as long as possible. Or, better said, to keep me there.”

I touch her slender ankle and gently move higher, toward the inside of her knee.

I feel her shudder, and I don’t know whether it’s because of what I’m telling her or because of my touch. I tend to believe it’s both.

“Two of them took advantage of the fact that I was dazed after a grenade exploded near me and a bullet had hit me in the shoulder, but I managed to escape. By then, your concert had already ended, and when I got home, you were already getting ready to leave me.”

“And I hit you right in the wound, didn’t I?” she says in a weaker voice, one where I no longer hear the anger from before. “After I got in the car, I realized I had blood on one hand, from when I pushed you.”

“Nothing serious compared to what I felt when I saw that I couldn’t get to you. And then, that you had left.”

“You should have told me...” she says, with a little anger and a lot of regret.

I shake my head.

I don’t want to think about that now, or about the pain from that moment, because all my attention is fixed on something else.

A Pakhan kneels before no one, but I do it before the woman who has become my world and the most important thing on this planet. I would destroy everything around me without blinking if it would save my wife.

And that is exactly what I will do.

“Artem,” she says, a warning in response to the touches climbing higher.

“Lean back.”

“I don’t think this is the moment for—”

“You’re my wife, dusha moya,” I cut her off, my expression unreadable. “It’s always the moment.”