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“I needed him at the time. I don’t anymore.”
I swallow. My mouth is acidic and dry. The fear tastes like sawdust. “If you do, Cee will never forgive you.”
His eyebrows knit together, but there’s a cold sense of amusement lingering there. “You’re still assuming a lot.” I frown, but he doesn’t explain. He just sighs and turns away from me once again. “Speaking for Celine, I mean. Pretending you know how she will feel.”
“I know my sister.”
“Correction: youusedto know her. Time has passed. Things have changed.”
He’s filled with so much confidence, I’m losing my own. “You’re just trying to scare me. Celine is still Celine.”
His profile, what little I can see of it, is bleak and austere. His eyes are seeing things that aren’t there. Memories. Threats in the shadow. “She was in a coma for a long time. When she woke up, her mother was dead. A few hours later, her father and sister vanished without a trace. She spent a year undergoing physical therapy, all alone. She had to re-learn how to walk and write.Alone. She suffered through intense depression and survived two separate assassination attempts. Again,alone, without her family to support her.”
By the time he’s done, my jaw is in the dirt. “What?!”
Ilarion barks out a laugh. There’s no humor in his eyes. “Did you think Benedict Bellasio would just scamper off into the darkness and die there? I took down the man and his empire in the span of one night. And, as you know, he always has to have the last word.”
“So he tried to kill Celine?”
“He tried,” Ilarion echoes. “It didn’t work. After that, he went silent.”
“And you still haven’t found him?”
He grits his teeth. “I’m working on it. My point is, Celine Theron is not the sister you grew up with.”
“Zakharov…”
“What?”
I look at him, wondering why I’m even going down this road. “Celine Zakharov,” I repeat, like he might have forgotten.Fuck, maybe I’m just trying to remind myself.
His forehead smooths out. “Ah” is all he says.
“Okay.” I know I’m beating a dead horse, so I take a deep breath and focus on what matters. “Okay, I’ll give you that. Cee may have changed a lot in the last five years. But I refuse to believe she’s changed so much that she wouldn’t care if her dad was killed.”
“She understands that some things are necessary.”
It’s a terrifying thought. Even more so because I’m starting to believe that he’s not making anything up. I think about the image of the beautiful, composed woman that stared back at me from the tablet this morning.
There was so much that was familiar about her.
There was more that was strange and alien.
“Fine. Maybe I don’t know her anymore. ButIstill care. So if you ever cared about me at all…promise me.”
There’s nothing on his face that suggests surrender. I’m on tenterhooks, skin crawling with desperate, pleading hope. I’m ready for it to be snuffed out.
But then, his head inclines by an incremental amount.
“Very well.”
I let out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding. My heart pounds painfully against my rib cage. So apparently, he does care about me…or he did at one point, at least.
“Thank you, Ilarion.”
“Don’t thank me just yet,” he growls under his breath. “I came here for a reason.”
Out of nowhere, I think about my recurring dream. It’s been the same one since the night we left.
