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Zori stood in front of a wall of glass windows and watched the snow fall over Moscow. She looked down at the street, waiting for the black town car to arrive, which would mark the beginning of her two weeks of freedom.
Come on, Maxim, leave already, she thought, hopping from foot to foot.
She needed to get out of the penthouse that she'd been locked into for days. She didn't like the memories of that place, crowding around and constantly trying to drag her under.
Zori's earliest recollection of being there was of Maxim taking her by the shoulders, looking deep into her eyes, and saying, “Magic is not real, Zoria.”
It was something he had repeated often, especially after her mother's suicide.
Some people would have told their four-year-old ward that her mother had been turned into an angel and flown to heaven. Not Maxim. He was a scientist who did not believe in anything other than what he could see under a microscope. Instead of an easy, comforting lie, Zori had gotten the truth.
Your mother was my best friend, and I cared for her deeply, but she was sick in her mind, and she killed herself. You carry the same sickness inside of you. Always beware of voices in your head that aren't your own, Zoria.
Like Zori would tell him if she did hear anything. Doctor Maxim Bogrov wasn't exactly God's chattiest person, but he had done his best with raising her and keeping her from dying. He had devoted his life to studying the brain disease that had eaten her mother's sanity away.
Zori had been taking his cure since she was fourteen to make sure it never happened to her. Now at twenty-six years old, she was beating the odds.
That was why whenever she got the chance, she escaped Maxim's security team and went to cause some trouble. She was on borrowed time, and she had to make the most of it in any way that she could.
Maxim had a conference in England for two whole weeks, and Zori was going to escape the building if it was the last thing she did. It was infuriating being locked up like a child.
Zori was planning on celebrating her first night out in months, and fuck, did she need it. A dying girl couldn't live on vibrators alone, and with any luck, she would get a few hours of freedom to find a big Russian boy with long hair and lots of tattoos to fuck her blind before Maxim's men tracked her down.
Zori checked the street beneath them again, impatient to get her night started. Her anxiety was up, and she needed to dance and fuck it out of her system. Still no car.
"Hurry the fuck up and leave already," she grumbled.
Zori fidgeted with the necklace she always kept hidden in her bra. It was a pendant with a woman holding a skull in one hand and a bundle of twigs in the other. She didn't know what it meant. It had belonged to her mother, and she had given it to Zori the night she had died.
Zori had memories of her mother, telling her stories of fairytales and magic and saints, but she couldn't remember who the lady on the pendant was meant to be. She carried it for luck and because it was the only thing Zori had left of her mother. Maxim had gotten rid of everything else. She made sure she kept it out of sight.
Zori sighed and stared out at the city of her birth and her mother's death. They hadn't been back to Moscow since her mother had jumped from the balcony on the other side of the penthouse.
After they had left Moscow, Maxim had promised to look after Zori, and they had lived all over the world. She'd had new teachers and tutors in every country they had lived in. She spoke Russian, English, German, and French fluently. She had a voracious mind, and Maxim had made sure to keep it busy.
She hadn’t been allowed to go to public schools or universities, and with the way they moved, there had been no point. When she suggested that she get a job, it had been shut down immediately. Her job was to stay alive and help Maxim with his research.
It wasn't that she was ungrateful to him, but God, she was lonely. He was rarely around, and when he was, it was to make sure she was healthy and was studying whatever new thing had caught her interest. They weren't close in the way she had read other families were, but he was all she had.
The building they were now in was Maxim's main research facility in the Tverskoy District. Like all the other places they had resided in, Zori always had her own apartment-sized rooms, like some kind of princess in a tower.
Or a lab rat in a pretty cage, she thought gloomily and pressed her forehead to the cold glass.
It was why Zori made sneaking out of the buildings they lived in an art form.
Outside, snow was falling again over the city in steady drifts. They had spent the last few months in a warm, tropical climate, so seeing snow again was beautiful.
Zori stared out at the night, her heart fluttering strangely in her chest, yearning for something she couldn't name. All she knew was that she wasn't going to find it in her cage.
Down on the street below, Maxim's black Mercedes pulled up, and she saw him climb in. She held her breath as it pulled from the curb to take him to the airport, and a grin spread over Zori's face.
"Finally!" She rushed to her wardrobe and pulled on a black low-cut top, her corset, and harness.
Zori might have been a shut-in, but she had full internet access and a weakness for online shopping and music. She had already found a club three blocks away and was going to make sure she blended in. She pulled on her leather pants and boots and went to check her make-up in the bathroom.
Zori had naturally Nordic silver hair and full lips like her mother's. Her blue eyes she got from a father she had never met. She unraveled her braid, letting the waves fall down to her breasts, and painted her lips red.
