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Everything is white. Then gray. Then quiet…
Finally, air! I gulp noisily for every breath as his hand withdraws.
“He hasn’t come for me yet,” Mischa grumbles, more to himself than me. “But he will.”
He watches me collapse against the pillows as I strain my lungs as much as my sore chest allows. Finally, he moves, but not to retreat. Oh, no. He tilts my head toward him as he settles further on the mattress beside me.
“Shall I tell you a story, Little Rose?” he murmurs, only to force my head to nod in agreement. “Fine, then. You ask me how I can care for you so well? I was number seven, but there was an eight... Her name was Aljona and she was better than you in every way. Sweeter. Kinder. She deserved mercy where your precious Winthorps deserve none.” He waits, allowing every word to sink in. Every insinuation. He lets my mind race to put the pieces together: the real woman who haunts him. Not Anna. Not even his mother.
“She was my half,” he rasps brokenly as heat springs beneath my eyes. “We shared a womb. A soul. Your Winthorps left her for dead when they forced the car my mother was driving into a ditch. They left her twisted and broken in the wreckage when they took my mother and me, but she survived, Little Rose. She clung to life…until it became too fucking much.”
He’s on his feet, halfway across the room before I can even register the vicious steps that take him there.
“When she died,Idied, Little Rose.” His back is to me, his posture rigid. “So don’t for a second make the mistake of believing that anything I’ve done is for you. You’re merely meant to serve a fucking point: Even now, I’m not like them. I won’t let you compare me to him.” He laughs and braces a hand against the wall. For balance, I realize. He’s shaking, trembling from head to toe.
It’s terrifying. Like witnessing the worst dredges of a storm unfold with no hope of shelter within reach. Emotion from him is a drug: a terrifying injection of toxins and hallucinogens. I see things I shouldn’t. Experience sensations that aren’t real.
Mischa…moaning in pain isn’t real.
I blink and he’s upright, his bloodshot eyes finding me from over his shoulder.
“You want to stay a shell? I’ll make you a fucking proxy. You can die here for all I care.”
And he means it. Every word rings true as he dresses himself and leaves.
He didn’t save my life out of any ounce of human pity.
He did it as a test.
And he failed.
