Irina’s POV

The door opened.

Sofia was gone before it finished swinging.

I didn’t see her leave. I heard it—the soft rush of her footsteps, the way she didn’t say anything, the click of the door behind her. Just the two of us now. Me on the edge of the bed, shoes still on, hands pressed flat against my thighs.

Him.

Nicolas filled the doorway for one second before he moved into the room. That was the thing about him—he didn’t need to do anything. Didn’t need to raise his voice or reach for anything. He just existed in a space and the space changed around him, the air going thick and close, the room suddenly smaller than it had been thirty seconds ago.

He looked at me.

I looked at the floor.

His footsteps were quiet across the carpet. Unhurried. The specific pace of a man who had nowhere to be except exactly where he was.

He stopped somewhere in the middle of the room.

The silence pressed.

I could hear my own heartbeat.

"I have a question."

His voice was flat. Not the cold, controlled flat from his office. Something with more weight to it. Something that had been sitting in him all the way down the hallway and hadn’t gotten any lighter.

I didn’t answer.

"Look at me when I’m talking to you."

I looked up.

His face. That face. I’d spent three weeks learning the shape of it and I still couldn’t read it right—still couldn’t tell where the performance ended and the real thing began. Right now there was no performance. That was the part that scared me. The part that made my hands press harder into my thighs.

"I want to ask you something," he said. "And I want an honest answer."

I said nothing.

"You’ve been living in my palace, sleeping in my bed, eating at my table. Maxim shows up. And you run." His eyes hadn’t moved from my face. "So I’m asking you directly. Despite everything—despite being here this long—do you still want to go back to him that badly?"

The question landed in the room like something thrown.

I stared at him.

*He thinks I ran toward Maxim.* The realization hit me slow, then all at once. He thought—he actually thought—

My throat closed.

My eyes went up to his face. Really looked. At the set of his mouth. The flatness in his eyes. The particular stillness of a man who had already made a decision and was waiting for the world to catch up to it.

*He’s going to send me back anyway.*

The thought arrived clear and cold.

*This is it. This is the conversation before he does it. He’s asking so he can say he asked.*

Something moved through my chest. Not fear. Not quite.

Anger.

Real anger. The kind that had been sitting under everything for longer than that—the kind that had nowhere to go because the cost of letting it out was always too high.

I looked at him.

I didn’t look away.

Nicolas went still.

"What," he said. Quiet. Dangerous. "Is that look."

I kept looking.

I couldn’t have explained it if I tried. It wasn’t a choice. It was just—the only thing left. When you’ve swallowed everything else and there’s nothing left to swallow, what comes up isn’t tears. Isn’t begging.

It’s this.

The corner of his mouth curved.

Not a smile. Something colder than a smile.

"You’re looking at me like that," he said. "Like I’m the one who did something wrong."

I didn’t answer.

"Like I’m the enemy." His head tilted, just slightly. "Is that it?"

"Aren’t you?"

The words came out before I could stop them. Thin. Flat. Barely a sound.

His eyes changed.

The cold smile disappeared.

Something moved across his face—too fast to track, there and gone—and then he was moving. Crossing the room. Fast. Faster than I expected.

I didn’t have time to stand up.

He was right there.

His hand closed around my throat.

Not crushing. Not the way Maxim had grabbed my arm earlier, the grip that had bruised before I’d even registered the pain. This was—different. Fingers wrapped around my jaw, thumb pressing just below my chin, tilting my face up. Forcing it up.

I grabbed his wrist.

Automatic. Both hands. My scraped palms screaming at the contact.

I didn’t pull. I just—held on.

We stared at each other.

His face was very close. His eyes had gone dark at the edges, that specific darkness I’d learned to track because tracking it was survival. His jaw was tight. Every muscle in his face had gone rigid.

"You want to go," he said.

Through his teeth. Barely.

"That’s what this is. You want to go. You’ve always wanted to go."

"I—"

"Don’t." His grip tightened. Not hurting. Just—*there.* Impossible to ignore. "Don’t explain it to me. Don’t give me the version with the good reasons. I’m not interested in the good reasons." His eyes burned.

My throat worked under his hand.

His hand was still on my throat. His eyes hadn’t moved from mine. There was something in them that I couldn’t name—something that was building, had been building since the garden, since the office, since whatever had happened in that room after Roman took me out.

Something that was very close to the edge of something else.

"Let me tell you something." His voice dropped. Low. Grinding out from somewhere behind his teeth. "I’m going to tell you this once. And you’re going to hear it."

I couldn’t have moved if I’d tried.

"I don’t care," he said, "what do you think." His grip shifted—not tighter, just different, like he was making sure I was paying attention.

"I will never," he said, quieter now, but somehow worse for it, "let you go anywhere. Never. Do you understand me?"

I stared up at him.

"Do you understand me, Irina."

Not a question.

"You want to run?" he said. "Run. See how far you get. See if there’s a single city on this continent where my name doesn’t mean something. See if there’s a single door that opens for you without me behind it." His eyes were very dark now, that green almost gone. "And then come back. Because you will come back. And I’ll be right here."

My hands were still on his wrist.

I could feel his pulse under my fingers.

Fast. Faster than his voice sounded. Faster than the controlled, grinding calm of everything he was saying.

I exhaled.

A small, shaking sound.

His eyes dropped to my mouth for one second.

Came back up.

He let go.

Stepped back.

Turned away.

I sat there on the edge of the bed and I didn’t move and I didn’t speak and I pressed one hand flat against my thigh.

The other hand closed around the vial in my pocket.

Small. Hard. Glass.

It had been cold for hours. Since the garden. Since Katerina. Since all of it.

It wasn’t cold anymore.

I could feel the heat of it against my palm—my own warmth, given back to me by something that had been sitting pressed against my skin all night—and I held it, and I didn’t say anything, and I looked at the back of his head.

The vial burned.