Irina’s POV

My room was exactly how I’d left it.

The bed was still made. The curtains were still drawn. The pillow arrangement I’d spent ten minutes constructing out of pure desperate optimism was still there, two lumps under the blanket that were supposed to look like a person sleeping.

They didn’t look like a person sleeping.

I didn’t know what I’d been thinking.

I sat down on the edge of the mattress. Didn’t take off my shoes. Didn’t do anything. Just sat there with my scraped hands in my lap and the vial in my pocket and the sound of the palace around me pressing in from all sides.

Roman had deposited me here without a word. One hand under my elbow, steering me down the corridor, and then the door opening and him standing aside and me walking through and the door closing behind me. Quiet. Final.

Like a key turning in a lock.

I pressed my palms flat against my thighs.

They stung. Deep, specific pain from where I’d hit the grass. I looked at them. Not bad. Not bad enough to matter. My face was worse—the side where Maxim had—

I stopped thinking about that.

Nicolas’s face when he’d walked into that office. That was what I couldn’t stop thinking about. That specific expression, the thing underneath the surface, the way the room had gone cold and tight around him without him doing anything at all.

He was angry.

Of course he was angry.

He’d caught me trying to run. On the night before Maxim was supposed to arrive. With a bag packed and my shoes on and everything. There was no version of that story that didn’t look exactly like what it was.

I’d made him look like an idiot.

In front of Maxim.

I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.

*Stupid.* So stupid. The pillows under the blanket—God, the *pillows*—like something out of a children’s movie. Like that was ever going to work. Like anything about tonight was ever going to work.

My knees were starting to hurt now that the adrenaline was fading. The grass had done a number on them. I should probably look at them. Probably clean the scrapes on my hands before they got—

A knock.

I went still.

Everything in me went rigid. My hands. My shoulders. The breath caught somewhere between my chest and my throat.

*He’s here.*

The thought came with a wave of cold that moved from my stomach outward. He’d finished with Maxim and Mikhail and now he was here, and he was angry, and I was sitting on the edge of a bed with pillow-shaped lumps behind me like evidence of every stupid decision I’d made in the last six hours.

"Miss Irina?"

The tension cracked.

Not Nicolas. The voice was higher. Softer. Familiar in a completely different way.

I let out the breath I’d been holding.

"Come in," I said.

Sofia opened the door.

She took one look at me and her whole face changed. She stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and crossed the room in about four steps.

"What happened to your face?"

I touched the side of my cheek. Forgot about it. "It’s nothing."

"It’s not nothing." She crouched down in front of me, trying to see it better. "That’s going to bruise. What—" She stopped. Her eyes moved down to my hands. Her expression shifted. "Irina. What happened?"

I opened my mouth.

Closed it.

Tried again.

"I tried to leave," I said.

Sofia went very still.

"Tonight," I added, like she needed the clarification. Like there was some other time I could have been referring to. "I packed a bag. I went out the service passage. I got almost to the wall and then I—" I stopped. "My father was there. And Maxim."

Sofia’s face did about five different things in the space of two seconds.

"They came early," I said. "The delegation. They arrived early and I didn’t know and I went around a corner and I just—" I laughed, a short terrible sound. "Walked right into them."

"God." She sat back on her heels. "Okay. Okay, what happened after that?"

"Maxim grabbed me. I fought back." I looked at my hands. "He hit me. Then Nicolas’s guards showed up and brought us all in and Nicolas was—" I exhaled. "He was in the office. And he was—"

I didn’t have words for what Nicolas had been.

"Angry," I said finally. "He was angry."

Sofia sat down on the floor. Just folded herself down onto the carpet right in front of me, legs crossed, looking up at my face. She wasn’t performing calm. She was actually calm, the infuriating bone-deep kind.

"And then?" she said.

"Then Roman brought me here." I looked at the door. "Nicolas stayed with them. I don’t know what he’s doing. I don’t know what he said. I just—I’m here and he’s there and in about twenty minutes he’s going to come through that door and I don’t—"

"Hey." Sofia put her hand over mine. "Breathe."

"I am breathing."

"You’re doing that thing where you breathe but it doesn’t actually work."

I pressed my mouth flat.

She wasn’t wrong.

I made myself slow down. Actually slow down. In through my nose. Out.

"Okay," Sofia said. "Tell me everything. Start from the beginning."

I told her.

All of it. The garden. Katerina. The things she’d said—every word, because I’d memorized them without meaning to, because they’d been playing on a loop in my skull for the last three hours. *The alpha king won’t protect you.* The servant in the hallway. *Tomorrow.* The bag. The service passage. The wall.

My father’s face when I’d run into him.

Maxim’s hand on my arm.

The way I’d hit him.

Sofia made a small sound at that part. Something between impressed and pained.

"You hit him," she said.

"Badly," I said. "Wrong angle."

"But you hit him."

"My knuckles are wrecked."

"But you—"

"Sofia. Focus."

She pressed her lips together. "Sorry. Go on."

I told her the rest. Nicolas’s office. The way the room had felt. The way Nicolas had looked at me—that one second, before he’d looked away again. Before he’d told Roman to take me to my room while he had things to discuss with his guests.

*Things to discuss.*

"And you still don’t know what he said to them?" Sofia asked.

"No."

"Or what’s happening right now?"

"No."

She was quiet for a second. Looking at me.

"But he didn’t—" She chose her words carefully. "He didn’t hand you over."

"Not yet."

"He sent you here. Sent you to your room."

"Yes."

"Not with them. Not back to Iron Thorn. He separated you from them and—"

"I know," I said. "I know what you’re going to say. But Sofia, he was *angry.* You didn’t see his face. Whatever he’s doing with them in there, once it’s done he’s going to come here, and he’s going to—"

"What?" she said. "What do you think he’s going to do?"

I stared at her.

She looked back. Steady. Waiting.

"I don’t know," I said finally.

"That’s honest."

"That’s terrifying."

"Yeah." She didn’t try to argue with that. "Yeah, I know."

We sat there for a second. The room around us quiet. The distant sound of the palace. That constant, unreadable hum of a place full of people doing things I couldn’t see.

"Katerina told him," I said. "About me being here. She contacted my father and told him. She arranged for them to come and take me back."

"Your own sister."

"Stepsister." The word came out flat. "She said she was doing it to help me. That this wasn’t my life. That he—that Nicolas was going to let me go anyway, so I should leave on my own terms instead of being handed over."

Sofia’s expression was careful. "And you believed her."

"I believe she believed it."

Sofia nodded slowly.

"She’s scared for herself," I said. "She’s built something here. A life. A real one—she has her mate, she has—" I looked at the floor. "She’s not wrong that I’m a complication. I am. Every day I’m here is another day that someone could figure out who she is and that affects her and her mate and—"

"Stop." Sofia’s voice was gentle but firm. "Stop making excuses for her."

I pressed my mouth closed.

"She made a choice," Sofia said. "You can understand why she made it and still be allowed to be hurt by it."

My throat felt tight.

"Yeah," I said. "Okay."

Another silence.

Sofia’s hand was still over mine. She turned it over, palm up, and looked at the scrapes. Her expression went a little complicated.

"You weren’t going to," she said quietly. "Use it."

I knew what she meant.

"No," I said.

"Even before tonight. You’d already decided."

I thought about lying. Decided against it. "Yes."

Sofia exhaled. Long and slow. "Okay."

"I know," I said. "I know it changes things for you. I know that’s not—I know you’re still trying to—"

"I’m not here to argue with you about it." She let go of my hand. "I told you. You do what you think is right."

"Sofia—"

"But Irina." She looked at me. Those clear eyes. Three years of watching this palace and everyone in it, everything she’d seen and everything she’d decided to do about it. "If he comes in here angry—if he comes in here and decides that tonight was the last straw, that you’re more trouble than you’re worth—" She paused. "The option’s still there."

The vial was in my pocket.

I could feel it.

"It’s fast," she said. Quiet. Matter-of-fact. Like she was telling me about a recipe. "I told you. Tasteless. He’d never know. One cup of—"

"Stop."

She stopped.

I looked at the floor.