Realization unfolded.
Marek laughed again, the sound hollow. “Yes, you see it now, don’t you? Congratulations.”
Neither of us spoke for a moment. The corridor suddenly felt too narrow, too exposed.
“I am being careful,” I said at last. It sounded weak in the face of his rage and desolation.
His eyes snapped back to mine. “No, you are not.” The words came out sharper this time, roughened by something still dangerously close to anger. “Careful is distance. Careful is control.” He took a step closer. “You look at him like losing him would matter more than protecting yourself.”
The words hit hard enough that I couldn’t answer.
Marek folded his arms across his chest. “You think no one before you has learned to keep quiet? You think the federation hasn’tburiedpeople before?”
An ice cold edge slid beneath my ribs. “What happened?”
His expression closed. “That’s exactly the point. Nothing happens publicly.” He held my gaze steadily. “People disappear quietly. Funding changes. Assignments stop coming. Careers flatten out.” A pause. “Stories get corrected. You of all people know this.”
I thought suddenly of Vasiliev smiling across the folding table.
Symbols must remain clear.
Marek looked exhausted now, the anger draining into something far older and more bitter.
“I spent years teaching myself that this part of me was something to survive, not something to live,” he said quietly. “Thenyouarrive here and look at an American skater as though he is the first honest thing you have ever seen.”
A flutter of guilt squeezed my chest. “Marek?—”
“No.” He shook his head. “Do not pity me. I made my choice.” His voice cracked on the final word.
We stood there in silence after that, until at last he exhaled.
“You should end it.” His words landed with a precision I was certain he’d intended.
I said nothing.
Marek studied my face for one long moment before bleakness settled into his expression. “You can’t, can you?”
I could not. Not even for a second.
He nodded, then stepped past me toward the corridor leading back to the rink. Just before disappearing into the noise again, he stopped without turning around.
“For what it’s worth, I hope he’s worth what this is going to cost you.”
Marek walked away.
I remained where I was, staring after him.
I had known the answer to Marek’s question immediately.
And that frightened me more than anything Vasiliev had said.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Dean
By the timeI reached the hotel, Milan’s February cold had worked its way through my coat and into my bones, but the lobby hit warm the second the doors slid open, heavy with coffee and polished wood and the low murmur of travelers dragging suitcases across marble floors. None of it held my attention for long. I spotted Mom near the windows, one hand wrapped around a coffee cup, the silver pot sitting untouched beside her.
She looked exhausted.
