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Apparently, she shouldn’t have asked that. When Alicia closed her eyes and smiled—a cruel expression, Sylvia winced and mouthed “sorry” to her second fiancé.
He rubbed the side of his hand over the whiteboard, wrote something, then flipped it around.
“I’m going to join them,” Sylvia said, reading the words exactly as he’d written them. “I’m going to be one of them.”
“No!” Alicia’s shook her head, her expression bitterly disappointed. “Why would you do that, after everything I told you?”
She glanced at Charlie, but he merely raised a brow. She’d have to answer this one on her own.
“I’m joining for love,” Sylvia said quietly.
Alicia snorted. “You’re taking a shortcut. You want what they will give you. Wealth. Power.”
“And I will use those for good,” Sylvia promised. “You say the playing field isn’t level, but a level playing field is a myth. I may be a romantic, but I’m not stupid.”
“You’ve chosen the losing side.”
“He won’t win.”
“He will. At the center of the Russian doll is a cataclysm.”
Another glance at Charlie. “Are you one of the dolls?”
“You think you hurt my pride? You can’t. But no, I’m not one of the dolls. My husband, his lovers, my lovers—they were dolls. I am the one who opened those dolls.” Her hands moved, as if twisting apart the top and bottom of a Matryoshka. “I exposed the next piece.”
Sylvia couldn’t stop herself from imagining Alicia twisting apart a person, a real living person, and the visual was so disturbing she had to look away. Charlie waved his arm, forcing her attention back to his board and the next question she was supposed to ask. “Isn’t Varangian the one opening the dolls?”
“No, no,” Alicia murmured, eyes half closed. “He creates the dolls, paints them, nestles them within. And then he goes on to create another set.” Alicia’s laugh was fractured and half-mad. “You inspire me to metaphor. To poetry.”
Charlie had written a single word on the board. “Cataclysm?”
With an apologetic glance at him, Sylvia went rogue, and instead of asking the one word question, she said, “The innermost nesting doll is a child, representing the matriarchal line of a family, the next generation that lives within each woman, or sometimes it’s meant to represent the soul, the outer dolls the body, mind, spirit.”
“Do not discount the obvious symbolism of oppressive fertility—that a woman is empty if she doesn’t make children.”
Even drugged, Alicia was brilliant, and for some reason that made Sylvia shiver. Charlie was waving the whiteboard in the air, a “what the fook are you doing?” expression on his face.
“What’s Varangian’s center doll?” Sylvia asked softly. “What’s the core?”
Alicia’s eyes closed. “The cataclysm.”
“And what is that?”
“Not what…when.” Alicia’s eyes were closed.
“When?”
“Soon, dear, soon. Do not join them. Do not stay with them. He will end them all.”
“You mean a bomb?” Sylvia asked Charlie’s question.
“Yes and no. Nothing so simple.”
“Alicia, I’m going to be with them. Will I die?”
“You will, or will wish you had.”
Sylvia had to take a minute to look away. For a moment, she seriously considered heeding Alicia’s advice. When they landed, she wouldn’t even leave the airport. She would turn around and go home. She would be with her brothers, she’d beg Juliette to let her join the Trinity Masters. She’d be safe and…
