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Chapter 17
The hall remains silent as I finish my tale. It’s almost funny how briefly my story can be summed up—barely a few minutes, I suspect. Yet every word has scraped the inside of my throat raw. I can barely suppress the horrors I’ve fought years to push back. They’re conjured by my boldness in addressing them.
But in a sense, I feel lighter from having finally voiced them.
“I, more than anyone, should want to fight Robert Winthorp with every fiber of my being out of spite and revenge,” I admit. “But that is not why I’m deciding how I am. It’s because I know, deep in my soul, this will never end any other way.”
“And your choice?” Sergei demands, his tone decidedly colder.
Mischa is watching me as well. Like always, it’s nearly impossible to decipher him.
“I vote to continue the war,” I say. “But not for myself, or Mischa, or any other argument.”
I merely know the truth: There is no such thing as peace.
“Then it’s decided,” Mischa says, but I can’t ignore the added harshness to his tone.
Neither he nor Sergei is pleased with my decision, it seems. Though admittedly for different reasons.
Sergei lost this round.
But Mischa seems unwilling to accept a victory.
“Council adjured.”
Very few members disperse. Most crowd the center of the room, battling for an audience with Mischa or Sergei. I’ve only caused more chaos, but I don’t stick around to see it unfold.
I push my way through the crowd and escape, racing down the hall, up the staircase, and into the barren room unofficially designated as mine.
Here, in the dark, I strip my dress and crawl beneath the bedsheets. The silence feels mocking after the deafening noise in the council chamber. My breathing scratches unevenly at the quiet—a fitting soundtrack for the creak of my doorknob being tested a second later.
“Please don’t come to gloat,” I plead into my pillow. “Please…”
Soft footsteps inch closer toward my bed despite the warning. They’re far too soft to belong to a man, Mischa or otherwise.
“Mouse?” I lift my head and spot her slight shadow along the wall. “Are you here for Mischa?”
Unsurprisingly, I’m not given an answer. The mattress shifts as a lighter body climbs onto the end. Resolutely, they sit while I sob, offering no comfort or judgment.
Nothing at all.
* * *
Iknow that this conversation must happen, even before I wake up to an empty room and don my simple blue dress. Vanya is already lurking in the hallway near my door, his graying hair gleaming silver in the shadow.
When he sees me, he sighs and inclines his head for me to follow. Were I bold enough to claim a resemblance between us, it might be in our actions more than anything. We both dread the inevitable.
Vanya’s chosen battleground is the small sitting room overlooking the gardens. Rather than claim one of the leather chairs, he leans against the wall.
“Your mother,” he begins gruffly, “because I do not doubt that she was your mother…” Looking at me seems to hurt him. He turns away, raking his fingers through his hair. “But I don’t know what lies you were told. Or by whom. But I don’t—”
“She never told me,” I admit hoarsely. “Not about my father. I asked her about his identity once and…I was never brave enough to ask again.”
“No,” Vanya insists. I hear him swallow as if fighting to form words. “I can’t be… She wouldn’t do that—no.” His eyes flash as they rake me over. From Marnie’s blue eyes, to my brown hair, to my bare, battered feet. “She wouldn’t keep something like that from me. Never. She wouldn’t do that to me!”
Tears spill down my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to prove it to you. I’m not sure if I even believe it myself…”
Of all the things to cross my mind, something Sergei said during one of our first meetings slithers across my thoughts. A name, uttered like a ghost’s.
