Page 65 of Lord of Justice

"It is so mortifying that you're in here," I whine. "Could you maybe go away and let me die quietly alone?"

He shakes his head, holding my hair with one hand and getting a wet washcloth from the sink with another. "No, you're stuck with me. You had lunch with the girls today, do you think you caught something? They all have kids, which are essentially toddling petri dishes of disease."

"Rude." I manage to laugh weakly. "Did you just compare all of your nieces and nephews to like, a leper colony?" He shrugs, and I admire the movement of his broad shoulders under the thin sweater he's wearing. Even though I look like a wretched, wrung-out mess, Andrey remains almost impossibly beautiful. His biceps bulgeagainst the sweater. He even manages to kneel elegantly behind me as he hoists my pathetic self up to my feet. Insisting on keeping his hands around my waist while I brush my teeth, he then scoops me up, carrying me back to the bedroom.

"I can walk, you know," I say, but I put my head against his shoulder just the same.

"Do you want me to take you out onto the terrace?" he asks. "It's warm tonight, maybe the fresh air would feel good. Well," he amends, "as fresh as New York City can offer."

I chuckle weakly. He carries me out, sitting on one of the lounges and keeping me on his lap. "I had no idea that you could add soothing caretaker to your repertoire," I say sleepily. "A man who can hold back your hair when you're throwing up your toenails is a rare gift indeed."

His hips move under me, getting comfortable. "Dasha had a terribly weak stomach when she was younger," he says. "She would throw up at the slightest provocation. Nikandr and I got very good at keeping a bag on hand so we could catch it in public. And then she would sob, mortified, for an hour until we distracted her. Usually with a video or a new stuffie."

"Did you just say the wordstuffie?"

He arches a brow, glancing down at me. "I'm sorry to disappoint you. While Iamninety-eightpercent emotionless robot, I occasionally manage to carve out a small fraction of tenderness from inside my frozen heart."

I settle against his chest again. "I don't think it's so frozen."

Taking my hand, he laces my fingers with his, and we listen to the evening traffic symphony of Manhattan.

Violet shows up the next day with a tote bag and a determined expression. "We'll do this in your bathroom." She's careful to make sure that Melina is nowhere in sight as she marches me up the stairs.

"Okay, this is ridiculous," I protest. "It was only two times." I question why I'm leaving out the third one last night.

Am I really afraid I'm pregnant? I don't feel different, I don't think. My breastshavebeen more sensitive. I chew my lower lip. Andrey made me come by playing with my nipples alone last week, but that's just him being a sex god, right? I don't realize I'm saying this out loud until she laughs.

"Yeah, I don't need you to be more specific, thank you. Here are four tests." Violet lines them up neatly on the counter after unwrapping eachone. "Pee on them all."

"Aren't we supposed to do this in the morning?" I'm eyeing the sticks.

"Any time of day is fine. After all, that morning sickness thing is a myth," she groans. "Pregnancy vomits are happy to visit you at any time of the day or night."

"Please don't give me something new to look forward to," I say wryly. She shuts the door and waits outside.

"This is ridiculous," I mumble. "I'll just pee on the sticks. They'll be negative, and she'll get off my back." I awkwardly handle the tests and put them on a piece of toilet paper and call her back in. "How long?"

Violet checks her phone. "Four minutes." We talk about Avros and his new words. We talk about Andrey's coronation/swearing in, and how Roman showed up at 2 AM, soaked in blood and staining the kitchen tile until she shoved him into the downstairs bathroom to shower off. "I swear, I think he bathed in it," she says crossly. "As if he’d taken a shower in human blood. I really don't want to know exactly how this was accomplished."

Shuddering, I agree. "I wouldn't either. But you know, the man is enthusiastic about his work."

The alarm on her phone goes off. I'm frozen on the toilet seat. I don't want to look. "Get your ass up," she says crisply.

Two pink lines. On each stick.

Aggressively pink lines, glaring at me as if they want me to beabsolutely certainI understand what they mean.

"Wait. I can't," I stammer, backing away like they might fly off the counter and attack me. "I can't be pregnant. I've only been married for three and a half months. I'mtwenty." I turn in little circles. "Everyone's going to think he married me because he knocked me up. I'm not ready for children. I don't even know if Andrey likes children. Does he like children? He said something the other day about babies being tiny petri dishes of disease."

Violet grabs my hands, and I realize I've been waving them around, off-kilter like a scarecrow in a windstorm. "Take a breath." I do, realizing I've been wheezing. "Sit down." I sink down on the seat and stare at the tests again. She's trying to be calm, holding back to see how I'm responding, but I can see the delighted smile spread across her face. It's hopeful.

"I'm pregnant, too," she offers. "We were going to tell everybody at twelve weeks, but you know I can never hold out. I'm eight weeks now, I wasgoing to tell you and Rose this week. We could have our babies together," she says, shyly. There are tears pouring down my face, and I don't know if I'm happy or sad, but... I lunge for her, we hug. We cry together.

Eventually pulling back, she smooths the hair off my face. "If you want this baby, we will all support you," she says. "But if you feel like you're not ready, if this is something you don't want, this is your choice." Her eyes are sad as she strokes her hand over my hair. "You've had so few choices in the last few months. But thisisyours, and no one else's until you make the decision, all right?"

"I want it," I say after a second, a little shocked at how fast it comes out. "I want this baby. I'm- what the hell! I'm on thepill,how could this happen?"

She frowns. "Didn't you take antibiotics for an infection in July?"