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I fix Uncle Kristian with a glare. I won’t cower before him or fall over my words rushing to explain myself. I asked him a question, and as someone who answers to me, or is supposed to anyway, he owes me a reply.
Realizing I’m not going to elaborate, Uncle Kristian reaches into his pocket. “I made him watch his father die, and then I made sure it was the last thing he ever saw.”
He tosses something white and shiny at my feet. Two somethings that are round with bloody stalks and gray markings.
Gray markings that stare back.
Eyeballs.
Jozef Golubev’s eyeballs.
I regard them for a moment, then lift my gaze to Uncle Kristian, who’s watching me closely. Is he hoping that I’ll collapse or throw up? Is he trying to shock and undermine me or prove that I’m too weak to lead?
No, I realize, as I drink in his hungry gaze. He’s hoping that I’m not bothered in the slightest. He wants to know that I’m pleased by his brutal offering and that Jozef Golubev means nothing to me.
I reach out and nudge one of the eyeballs with my foot and it wobbles on the tiles. “Nice work. They deserved it.”
Uncle Kristian smiles wider, delighted that I’m pleased.
“But next time, ask me before committing murders and atrocities in my name.”
“Of course, princess. Anything you say.” He reaches down and scoops up the eyeballs, and then flings them into the waste disposal. The machine grinds noisily as it chomps them up.
Uncle Kristian turns to me with a narrow, angry look. “Was it him?”
“Was it him what—oh.” I fold my arms. Again with the virginity thing.
“If it was him, I’ll go back for a more intimate part of him and roast it over a fucking fire.”
Anger boils through me. “Does it matter to you that much? Am I unclean, despoiled,ruinedin your eyes? Is this what it takes to make you turn away from me in disgust, the fact that a tiny membrane between my legs isn’t there anymore?”
Uncle Kristian shakes his head as he washes the blood from his hands. “You did what you had to do these past two years. You will never be anything but precious to me, Zenya.”
He shakes off his hands, dries them on a cloth, and turns to me with glittering eyes.
“What I won’t accept, what I willneveraccept, is that there’s a man out there walking around with pictures of you naked in his head. Memories of how you look when you—” He makes his hand into a fist and presses it on the counter as if struggling to maintain his composure at the mere thought of another man having sex with me. “I won’t allow him to possess what rightfully belongs to me. He needs to die.”
“You’re insane,” I tell him.
He gives a mirthless laugh. “I promise you that given how I feel, I’m acting very fucking normal right now.”
Says the man who just threw eyeballs at my feet and fed a man’s face to his dog.
Uncle Kristian reaches for my hand and pulls me closer, his voice growing husky. “I want you, Zenya. Marry me and I’ll always love and protect you. I’ll love and protect our children. You and our babies will be the only ones in the world who matter to me. I will always strive to do what the leader of the Belyaevs asks of me, no matter who he or she is, but I answer first to no one else but my wife.You.”
“And if the leader of the Belyaevs is your wife?”
“Then I’m hers to command.”
I want to believe him. I desperately want to, but the pain of his absence is so raw and it still bleeds. “I don’t believe you. How can I?”
“Because I’m saying it,” he snarls. “Does my word as a man and your lover mean nothing to you?”
My lover. My stomach swoops with happiness and alarm, and I yank my hand out of his. Everything’s moving so fast. “You should have thought about that before you abandoned me to live on the other side of the country.”
“You know I didn’t have any choice about that.”
“Yes, you did.”
