The shot goes wide.
And he’s gone into the black water below.
22
KATERINA
The afternoon is almost peaceful.
That’s what makes it strange.
Sofia is on the carpet in the nursery, building something complicated and structurally unsound out of wooden blocks and two stolen hair ribbons. She says it’s a palace. Nikolai says it’s obviously a fort. They have been arguing about this for seven minutes without raising their voices, which is their particular talent as siblings. Sofia wages war loudly. Nikolai does it like a diplomat with a grudge.
I sit cross-legged beside them and hand Sofia another block before she can climb over me to get it herself.
“No, not that one,” she says at once. “The gold one. This is the queen’s tower.”
“There is no queen’s tower,” Nikolai says, not looking up from his side of the structure. “You said it was a prison in case of invaders.”
“It can be both.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It makes royal sense,” Sofia says.
I laugh despite myself.
For a little while, I let the sound of them pull me into something softer. Sofia’s chatter. Nikolai’s dry corrections. The warm, familiar smell of the nursery. The weak sun coming through the windows. The simple fact that they are here, that I can see them, touch them, reach out and smooth a hand over Sofia’s hair when she leans too hard into me and nearly topples her own kingdom.
Then the nanny comes in and tells me Papa wants the children downstairs later for tea.
I say yes automatically, then regret it as soon as the door closes.
I don’t want them paraded in front of anyone. I don’t want them in formal rooms with formal voices and my father pretending everything is under control.
Still, I say nothing. I don’t have the energy for another fight before dinner.
When the children finally tire of their fort-palace-prison and move on to drawing terrible horses with too many legs, I leave them with the nanny and head down the corridor toward my room.
That’s when I hear voices in Papa’s study.
The door is not fully closed. Not open enough to invite attention, but not shut tight either. The sort of careless gap that tells me the conversation wasn’t meant for me, only hidden well enough that no one thought to check the hall twice.
I recognize Arkady’s voice first.
Thin. Nervous. Too eager even when he’s trying not to be.
“I’m telling you, I don’t want to be in the middle of this.”
I slow without meaning to.
Papa says something, he sounds displeased. But I don’t catch what he tells Arkady.
I go very still. A chair scrapes inside the room.
I barely have time to step back before the study door opens.
Arkady comes out first, and one look at him is enough to tell me something in there went badly.
