Irina’s POV
I pushed the door open.
Three pairs of eyes turned toward .
Roman. Andrei. Nicolas.
All of them. In the sa room. Looking at .
I hadn’t planned for three.
For one terrible second I just stood there in the doorway with the tray in my hands and my heart doing sothing catastrophic in my chest. The two cups. The steam still rising from them. The small glass vial sitting in my jacket pocket like it weighed fifty pounds.
"Irina." Andrei recovered first. He always recovered first. "This is unexpected."
I stepped into the room.
My eyes went to Nicolas. He was standing at his desk—not sitting, standing, like he’d been mid-movent when the door opened. He looked at the tray. Then at my face. Sothing flickered across his expression, too fast to catch.
"You were talking about Katerina." The words ca out before I’d decided to say them. "I heard you. In the corridor." I set the tray on the small table by the door and turned around. "What about her?"
Roman and Andrei exchanged a look.
"Your stepsister," Andrei said carefully. "Katerina. She’s been living here, actually. Changed her na. Married one of our warriors." He tilted his head. "You knew about that part."
"Yes," I said. "I knew."
"Well." He spread his hands. "We’ve been looking for her. Since this afternoon, actually."
My stomach dropped.
"What do you an you’ve been looking for her?"
Roman cleared his throat. "More precisely—" He paused. Like he was choosing the words. "She’s no longer on the grounds."
I stared at him.
"She left," he said. "Her and her mate. On the day Maxim arrived." He looked at steadily. "When the gates were busy with the incoming delegation. It seems they took the opportunity."
The room went very quiet.
Katerina was gone.
She’d left on the sa day she’d co to find in the garden. The sa day she’d sat across from with her hands folded over her stomach and told this wasn’t my life. The sa day she’d handed the vial and the plan and the certainty that Nicolas was going to send back.
She’d handed all of that, and then she’d walked out.
Not just out of the garden.
Out of the palace.
Out of the city, probably.
*Sowhere quiet,* I thought. Her voice in my head. *Sowhere yours.*
She’d found hers.
She hadn’t looked back once.
"Irina."
Nicolas’s voice. I blinked. Ca back to the room, the three of them watching , the lamp throwing yellow light across the desk and the carpet and the tray with its two cups of tea that I couldn’t look at directly.
"Are you—"
"I’m fine." I pressed my mouth flat. "I’m fine."
I wasn’t fine.
But the alternative was falling apart in front of Roman, and I’d rather put my hand through the window.
Nicolas was still watching . That close, careful watch. The one that always made feel like he was reading sothing I hadn’t written down.
He looked at the tray. Then back at .
"Why are you here?" he said. "What did you co for?"
My face went hot.
God.
Of all the monts. Of all the rooms to walk into, of all the questions to be asked with an audience—
"I made tea," I said.
Roman made a sound. I didn’t look at him.
"For you," I added. Which sohow made it worse.
Andrei’s face was doing sothing complicated that I was refusing to acknowledge. I could see it in my peripheral vision. He was very deliberately looking at the ceiling.
He looked at a for a long mont.
Then sothing shifted in his face. Small. Barely there.
Roman cleared his throat.
Very loudly.
"Well," Andrei said, pushing off the desk he’d been leaning on. "Given that the tea situation has been thoroughly addressed—"
"Andrei." Nicolas’s voice.
"We were just going," Andrei said. "Weren’t we, Roman."
"Absolutely," Roman said. He was already moving toward the door. His expression was the specific expression of a man who had decided this conversation was no longer any of his business and was very committed to that position. "The Katerina search can wait until morning. I’ll have a full report by—"
"Go," Nicolas said.
They went.
Roman passed the tray without looking at it. Andrei paused for exactly half a second—his eyes going to the cups, then to , then away—and then he was through the door and it was closing behind them and the latch clicked and the room was—
Quiet.
Just us.
Nicolas looked at .
I looked at the tray.
The two cups sitting there. Steam barely rising from them now. One of them perfectly ordinary. One of them.
My throat closed.
I crossed to the table.
Picked up the correct cup. My hands were steadier than they had any right to be. I turned and carried it to his desk and set it in front of him without spilling anything, without shaking, without giving anything away.
"Here," I said.
He looked at the cup. Then up at .
The lamp on the desk threw warm light between us. Outside, sowhere far below, the city kept moving. Forty-two packs. A war on the eastern border. A cell in the east substructure. A cup on a table by the door that neither of us was going to touch.
All of it.
And in the middle of all of it—
His office. The two of us.
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