Page 12 of Essence of Fear

Books, or the ones he found lying around in the old, forgotten rooms upstairs in the Compound, kept him from becoming bored. And, where his education had officially stopped at age twelve, he at least continued reading. That spoke to something good for him, surely.

“Why haven’t you run yet?”

Pav almost dropped the cup he was currently scrubbing at the new voice coming from behind him, but he didn’t. Usually, he just left the door to enter his quarters open because no one came this far into the lower part of the Compound. He was mostly left alone, now. If someone had business down here, it was almost always in the furnace room or with one of the prisoners in the cells.

Never for him, though.

He recognized the voice and maybe that was the reason why he relaxed a little. Not enough that he felt safe, but safety was a fucking joke here. Nothing was ever safe.

“Konstantin,” Pav greeted, not unkindly.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“There’s nothing to answer.”

“I think there is, yes?” Konstantin’s sigh echoed through the space, crawling to Pav’s spot at the kitchen sink slowly. “My father is gone—and he’s the one who put you here over a decade ago.”

“Fourteen years ago.”

“Hmm.”

Pav finished washing the cup and set it on the cupboard with the other washed dishes sitting atop a drying towel. Turning slowly, he found Konstantin Boykov standing in the doorway of his quarters. The man hadn’t even stepped beyond the threshold, and Pav wasn’t sure if he appreciated that, or if that was a sign of something bad yet to come.

“He’s gone,” Konstantin said, “and so why aren’t you? Nothing is keeping you here and no one would stop you.”

“Wouldn’t they?”

He’d tried to run once.

It hadn’t ended well.

Konstantin arched a brow, and it made the man’s hard features sharpen even more. He didn’t look entirely like his exiled father—there were obvious differences—but his features were similar enough that it made Pav pause, and wonder … how alike are you to your father, Konstantin Boykov?

The answer to that question would likely decide how this meeting ended, honestly. Pav still wasn’t willing to ask the question out loud.

“I don’t have any place to go,” Pav replied, “the Compound is my home.”

Konstantin said nothing, but Pav didn’t miss the way the man’s throat jumped like he was swallowing back those words and trying to digest them. “Is that really how you feel?”

“The outside …” Pav cocked his head to the side, choosing his next words carefully. “I don’t know it well.”

“You’ve been allowed to leave.”

“Occasionally. Usually with someone else. Always at night. I know some people beyond these walls—people I met through the people here. Should that make me feel safe enough to trust that I know what the rest of the world is like, too?”

Again, Konstantin said nothing.

Pav didn’t blame the man.

He went back to his work at the sink, finishing up the last few dishes he had to wash, and setting them to dry on the rack. He found Konstantin was still standing in the doorway when he was done, and turned back around.

Pav frowned. “Why aren’t you coming in?”

Konstantin’s brow dipped. “This isn’t my home. You’ve not invited me in.”

That never mattered to anyone before.

This place wasn’t his, either.