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“Here!” Finn yells to Theo, who turns and catches the keys that Finn throws. “One of those should get those cuffs off.”
Nikolai is holding a blanket, and he throws it around me, covering me as Theo starts to try keys in the handcuffs. Nikolai reaches for my hands, looking at my bruised face, his expression a mask of concern. “Marika, are you—”
“I’m not sure I’d say I’m fine,” I whisper, the words overlaid by Theo’s curse as another key fails to work. “But I’m alive, and he’s not. And I killed him before he managed to hurt me too badly.”
Nikolai looks at my face, still filthy, and winces. “We need to get you home,” he murmurs. “Please don’t argue, Marika—”
“Where do you think myhomeis?” I whisper, looking up at him, at the same moment that Theo finally finds the right key, and I feel the cuffs come loose from around my wrists.
I stand up slowly, wrapping the blanket around myself, and look between the two men. Theo’s face has pain and regret written all over it, and he winces as he looks at me. His fern-green eyes meet mine, and for the briefest of moments, I forget how angry I am with him. I forget everything except the comfort and happiness that I so briefly had with him. As he stands there looking at me helplessly, his hands starting to reach for me without meaning to, I collapse against his chest.
I hear his sharp intake of breath, feel the way his arms go around me unhesitatingly, and there’s no anger in him any longer. He pulls me close to him, his breath warm against my ear, and to my shock, as my cheek brushes against his, I feel the sudden dampness of tears on his skin, his hand pressing against the back of my head. “I thought I had lost you forever, Marika,” he whispers, and then his breath catches, his body tensing as he suddenly lets me go, stepping away. “I mean—”
Theo clears his throat, wiping quickly at his face before anyone else can see. “Home is with your brother,” he says calmly, and I think only I hear the slight crack in his voice, the way it breaks a little over those words. I realize, with a faint crack in my own heart, that it’s the sound of a dream dying—the dream he had shared with me of a different life in the manor outside of Dublin, of family photos that would hang on that wall space next to the staircase, of a quieter life together. A sort of retirement for him—a second life, in a way.
I see the resignation in his eyes as he steps back again, his hands dropping to his sides. The anger is long gone, replaced only by defeat and regret. And while with another man I might have thought that it was a trick, a guise to try to get me to fall back into his arms, there is one thing I learned about Theo from the very beginning—and that was how to tell when he was being genuine.
There is very little dishonesty in him, at least when it comes to those he cares about. I imagine that’s why my lies hit him so hard, and I feel an ache of regret in my own chest.
“I know it doesn’t matter,” he says softly, those green eyes still holding mine. “I know that nothing I can say or do can ever make up for it. But I am so deeply sorry, Marika.”
I swallow hard, looking at him. For a moment, the basement narrows down to the two of us, the sounds of Adrik’s body being removed and my brother shifting restlessly nearby, of low voices and footsteps fading away. There’s only Theo and I, and the broken expression on his face as he speaks.
“There is nothing I can do except give you back a life made of your own choices,” he says quietly. “And though I expect you will go back to your brother’s house, if he wishes the truce between us to continue, he will honor that and let you make those choices, whatever they may be. He will make no more decisions for you, nor will anyone else.” Theo looks at Nikolai with narrowed eyes, and he nods.
“You will have a divorce,” Theo says quietly, looking back at me. “And a settlement—a generous one. It will be in your name—money for you to do with as you please, yours and only yours. And you will have your freedom, Marika.” He lets out a long, slow breath, his shoulders slumping. “I will never bother you or your family again.”
I don’t know what I would have said, but he turns away before I can get a chance to say anything at all. “I’ll be in the car,” I hear him say to Finn in a low voice before he starts to go up the stairs. He doesn’t look back, leaving me there shivering even though I’m wrapped up in the blanket, an ache spreading through me that feels strangely like a broken heart, even though I couldn’t say why.
“Let’s get you home,” Nikolai says gently, his hand on the small of my back. “I’ll have a doctor meet us at the house. You can get some rest—”
I don’t hear the rest of what he says. Exhaustion swims up and grasps me, making me totter on my feet, and the last thing I feel is Nikolai’s arms around me before I pass out cold.
Marika
When I wake up, I’m in my old bed at the mansion, in my room. I sit up in a cold sweat, wondering dizzily if I somehow dreamed it all, before I see the note on the side table in Lilliana’s scripted handwriting.
Text me when you wake up. I’ve been staying here. Nikolai comes by as often as he can, but I’ll come up first, in case you don’t want to see him.
I read the note twice, a sudden rush of gratitude for my sister-in-law filling me. Lilliana was raised to be a pawn, a biddable mistress to Nikolai’s father, but she has a spine of steel that no one saw until she chose to show it. Even now, she doesn’t hide it from Nikolai, reminding him often with her behavior thathechoseher—and if he wants to keep choosing her, it will be as she is.
It’s a remarkable trait in a woman who was groomed to be anything but that, and I know she must have exercised it on Nikolai, for him to agree to wait to see me.
I fumble for my phone, feeling a faint ache still in my wrists and fingers from the cuffs.I must not have been out that long,I think as I type out a message to her, letting her know I’m awake, and sink back under the warm blankets against the downy stack of pillows.
After the basement, this feels like heaven. I’ll never take it for granted again.
I’m back home.The thought should fill me with happiness and relief, and it does—but there’s a measure of sadness too that I hadn’t expected. A longing for someone that I know I shouldn’t miss.
Theo. I close my eyes against the wave of yearning for him. I miss waking up next to his warmth in the bed, the heavy press of his arm over me, the brush of his lips, the eagerness with which he touched me every morning. I miss that brief time when I was able to pretend, for small stretches, that everything would be okay. That I could be happily married to a man who was so very different than I’d been led to believe.
That everything would somehow work out, and Theo and I would be happy.
I close my eyes against the burn of tears.I miss you.The words hover behind my lips, unspoken, and the man I want to say them to is nowhere near. As far as I know, I’ll never see him again.
That thought shouldn’t tear at my heart, but it does.
There’s a soft knock at my door, even though I’d told Lilliana to come up. “Marika?” she calls softly through it. “I’ve brought up tea and some food. Do you want me to come in?”
