Page 53 of The Darkness is Calling

“I’m going to kill someone before I end up killing you,” he mutters.

Everyone has their own thing, but all I can think about is getting back to the room.

“So I’m the only one going to bed like a good boy?”

He moves slowly, stopping in front of me and studying my face for a few seconds. “You’re smiling again.”

I haven’t even realized it, but he is right, and I carefully try to correct myself.

My brother is steel looking at me with his dark blue eyes and sighs. “I haven’t seen you smile since Mother used to make you pancakes and draw a smiley face on them with chocolate, even though you were twenty.”

This time, I know I am smiling.

“She still does that when we visit her.”

He nods slowly at my statement.

“Except you haven’t smiled in years, not even at her pancakes. Not a real smile, like the one you have now.”

I choose not to answer, because he is right. So this time he smiles sadly, shaking his head with bitterness.

“Be careful, Artem.” His words are more as a plea than a warning.

“Go have your fun.”

“I think I’ll let the bastard run through the warehouse so I can practice shooting a moving target. I have a feeling I’ll need it.”

He leaves the office, and I look at the knife in my hand, then at the wound still bleeding onto the carpet. And that is how I leave the office, heading toward my bedroom, where something tells me the princess is not asleep.

I find her leaning back against the headboard, watching a movie where people are dressed in oldfashioned clothing. I assume it is the one she mentioned.

Her eyes find me the moment I open the door, and her breath stops for a second.

Perhaps mine would too if I did not know how to control my reactions. Carefully hiding the knife in my pocket, I close the door and head toward the dressing room when her voice stops me abruptly.

“Wait.”

She quickly gets out of bed and comes toward me.

This time, my body reacts, especially when she takes my injured hand and examines it.

“What the hell happened to you?”

“I’m going to change,” I tell her, trying to escape her unsettling touch.

“Absolutely not! You’ll get blood all over your clothes. Let’s go to the bathroom.”

I am used to being attacked from behind, to being shot at from around corners, and I react immediately whenever danger stands before me.

But there has never been a woman who raised her voice at me, except my mother or Polina.

Caught off guard by her attitude, I follow as she pulls me to the sink.

I’m lost in her image.

Her beauty comes from the shape of her oval face, the beautifully defined chin, the smooth skin. But her eyes carry the most emotion, and even now they define my existence in a way I never imagined I would allow.

She is worried.