Page 4 of Pas de Trois
I feel Ezra take a step back and I see him cross his arms over his chest from the corner of my eye. I don’t tear my eyes away from Nikolai, but I sense the look on Ezra’s face shows something resembling pride and encouragement.
Nikolai’s eyes turn to the ceiling again. “I struggled to select a beneficiary before I found you.” He sounds breathless and weary. “I was twenty-six and I knew what I wanted. I wanted to find a boy. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell my father. He judged me rather harshly for my…ambivalence. I selected your studio at random, showed up that day on a whim. I took one look into the studio and I saw you dancing.” He shifts and flinches and I’m glad for his pain. “Anya,” his eyes fall on me again, “I felt something deep for you. I was drawn to you. Instantly obsessed. I thought it felt like falling in love.”
Oh, fuck no.
“Don’t feed me lies,” I hiss. “Tell me the truth.”
“That’s the truth.”
“I was a child. You don’t fall in love with a child!” I step closer, looming above him in the way he always loomed over me.
“It wasn’t like that. Not then. I saw…” his breath stutters, “I saw another little girl who kept bumping into you. You gave her that fierce look of yours and when your teacher wasn’t looking, you marched over to her, waved your finger in her face, and told her something that made her cheeks go white. She moved as far away from you as she could, and you took center stage. But you were obedient, too, and you followed your dance teacher’s instructions perfectly. There was no one else in that room worth looking at. I fell in love with your spirit. I knew someday you’d make the perfect slave.”
I reach down and I slap him. “You’re disgusting. Lusting after a child.”
His face contorts in pain. “Lust came later.” He closes his eyes. “But I always cared deeply for you, Anya. If I didn’t, you would have died a hundred deaths at my hands by now. I made you stronger.”
“You made me a slave.”
“I gave you everything. I gave you the life of a Mikhailov.”
Ezra makes a derisive sound but doesn’t interrupt.
I drop to my knees, just so I can lean over Nikolai and show him the rage on my face. “I would rather die than have the life of a Mikhailov.”
He chuckles, but it cuts off abruptly with a stuttering breath. “Rabynya, that is the exact choice you must make. And you must make it in a hurry. I think I might be dying.”
I glance at Ezra and we share a look of confusion. “What are you saying?”
“How have you been feeling?” Nikolai asks.
“What?”
“Have you seen a doctor? Have any blood tests been done?”
“What are you talking about?”
“We make our money stealing and selling human lives...but we control each other with lies and secrets.”
Ezra steps closer. “What are you trying to say?”
“I put a lie in Vigo’s contract,” Nikolai groans, crow’s feet wrinkling at the corners of his eyes as he squeezes them shut in pain.
Good.
I want him to feel pain.
“What was the lie?” I demand.
“I’m sure if you think about it enough,” Nikolai coughs, “you’ll figure it out. Maybe in time the truth will grow on you.”
What the hell does that even mean?
I shoot to my feet, enraged, indignant, fucking tired of him and the games he plays with my head. But I’m so tired and weak, so hungry, so thirsty, so out of my mind with suffering that I feel immediately light-headed and I stumble to catch my balance. I veer sideways. Ezra’s at my side in an instant, catching me around the waist, and righting me.
I look up at him and a green spark catches fire in his eyes. It lights my skin in flames that refuse to be ignored. In the mad rush from Ezra saving my life to fleeing the Vittoris, I hadn’t taken a moment to let it hit me that Ezra is with me.
We’re together and alive and safe for the moment.
