Page 70 of Viparious

“I’m sorry, malyshkonuk. You’re going to be safe now, just copy your mama, okay?”

My hand on my thigh moves, my fingers alternating between memorizing the screeching beeps showing they’re alive.

Warm. Not blue.

I sit back in the seat and try to stop the smell of burning flesh from infiltrating my senses. It’s been stuck in my nose for the entire twelve hours since I left Moscow. It doesn’t stir any reaction other than disgust because it mixes with the scent of sugar. Burning flesh has a sweet scent anyway, but the artificial sweetness of chocolate makes it worse. My stomach churns, wanting to expel everything at the memory of the cake. Not the woman who gave birth to me burning alive, that brings a smile to my lips as her screams mixed with the sound of the flames roaring.

A gasp has me moving back, ashamed of being caught.

“Your hands.”

Two words filled with pain, and I know I’ve made the wrong decision coming here. I should have left them alone. My hand that was hovering in midair falls to my thigh and I continue watching the monitors as I use both of them to tap each beat of theirs against my knee. I don’t look at Inessa as I give her another apology.

“I’ll leave, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

But I don’t stand because her heart rate slows. I’ve been watching it, I know it, I could fucking draw it. It hasn’t changed once in the hours I’ve been sitting here.

Sadness.

That’s all I can see when I turn to her. Tears line her lashes, and she gives me the smallest smile in existence as she looks from my hands to my face. The pain mixes with care as she continues flicking those muted dark eyes from my fingers moving to my face. But she can’t meet my eyes anymore. She always met my eyes; I didn’t dislike it for once. The sad smile increases both in curvature and emotion as she whispers, “You’re wearing a suit again.”

I want her to keep talking and remain rooted in place, hoping she does.

She doesn’t.

She just stares at me.

With that sad smile.

I can’t process her sadness and allow thirty seconds more as I finalize their heartbeats before I stroke down my thighs to get rid of the unease and stand. There’s a small brush against my little finger, a barely-there touch, and I look down to see Inessa stretching out to hook her little finger around mine. There’s no pressure and she forces me to look at her as she gentle says, “You don’t have to leave. If you don’t want to.”

The bruise on her cheek is already blue and there’s a cut on her lip.

Blue. So much blue.

His death was too easy, and I can’t remember it.

I take a controlled breath and turn to her, making sure my hands don’t touch her as I lean over and kiss her forehead. I give a promise I’ll never take back until my dying breath.

“Whatever you want is yours.”

Dark eyes full of hesitance and a voice that match stare up at me as she quietly asks, “Will you tell me what happened?”

She’s always been good at proving I’m a fucking liar and we both know the truth without me voicing it. She’s heard too much already. She’s seen too much. But I can’t put the weight of my failings on her shoulders and slip my hand out of her grasp.

1 I’m sorry, my little queen

TWENTY

Inessa

Giving me a tight-lipped smile and no stupid comment, Vlad presses his lips to my forehead instead of answering. Maybe it is his answer, proof that his lips are sealed shut and he won’t give me anything. He speaks against my skin in the softest whisper as he says goodbye, again.

“You were right, you’re a queen.”

I can’t keep expecting him to give me anything. He has made it clear that he doesn’t want me, he wrote it in a contract, but my stupid heart looks for arguments of the opposite. Even when I’m competing with the memory of a dead woman, I still want him by my side. But his happiness means more than my own and I stay silent, refusing to force anything out.

I rub along my stomach when the twinges come again and close my eyes, so I don’t have to see him walk away. The door closes with a muted thud, softly. Vlad, who doesn’t know the meaning of the word soft, leaves my life so gently that I don’t even hear his steps outside of the door.

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