He holds Ivy’s gaze for a beat too long, measuring her again in that way he always does when a challenger decides to step into the ring with him. But then his shoulders relax a fraction, and he gives the smallest of nods. Not to Lettie, but to Ivy.
“Of course. She will be well taken care of while she’s here,” he says simply.
The corner of my mouth twitches.
Four months ago, Ivy trembled when I first spoke of bringing her into my world. Seven years ago, she’d stood in front of Lev and the others like a deer surrounded by wolves, unsure if she’d survive the night or be devoured by morning.
Now she commands them. They bow to her without even realizing.
There’s a certain poetry to it.
Bags follow us up the steps, a parade of luggage that represents the smallest slice of a life disassembled and reassembled in a new country. The rest will come on a cargo plane and then by truck and then up stairs where servants have carried crates since the house belonged to men who took their tea with czars.
The familiarity hums in my bones.
I didn’t expect to be comforted by the mundane, but here we are.
Days ago, I told my staff what to stock and buy, what to tuck into drawers so that when Ivy opened them, she would find exactly the number of hair ties she always loses, the brand of tea she swears tastes like childhood, the soaps she told me once while half-asleep that made her feel clean in a way body wash alone couldn’t manage.
Leo’s room holds books he already loves and books he will eventually. Toy soldiers and train cars stare out from shelves. A thick rug spreads like a safe meadow on the floor. A nightlight waits by his bed.
I tell myself I’ve thought of everything and know at the sametime that I’ve missed ten thousand tiny things that will matter because they matter to them.
It takes hours to settle. Not with boxes and hangers and lists—that will be tomorrow—but with the new rhythm of us living in this house. Night falls, the windows turning from gray mirrors to black. The house quiets in stages like an orchestra putting its instruments away after the show.
“Come,” Ivy says to me once we tuck Leo in for bed and say goodnight to her sister. Her eyes have that light in them that ripples desire.
I let her lead me.
In our room, she stands me in front of the bed and unfastens my shirt like she is unwrapping a gift she bought for herself. When I lift her onto the mattress, she arches into me, reclaiming her place by my side. All I can think, over and over again, ismine, mine, mine.
After I ravage her and she lies wrecked tucked against my chest, her breath slows. The room smells like sex and whatever chemical alchemy has been wrapped around us to make this place feel like ours.
She’s asleep before I slide free from underneath the sheets.
On silent feet, I dress in the dark, choosing the shirt nearest the chair and the pants tossed by the door. The hall is dim, sconces turned low.
My study is the only room in the house that feels like mine alone. The lamp on the desk glows amber, bathing the room in a soft aura. The shelves hold histories written by men I do not admire and a few by men I fear and understand too well.The desk is clean—Lev’s doing, I suspect, and a fire crackles in the hearth on the other side of the room.
The leather chair behind my father’s desk, now mine, sighs when I sit.
Someone else sighs too, startling me.
Rising to my feet in an instant, I find Alisa standing by the window, a figure shrouded in black. The frost on the panes turns her into a cutout against winter. She doesn’t turn toward me or acknowledge I’m even here because she wants me to speak first. It’s a trait of hers I’ve never cared for.
When I don’t, she’s forced to pivot away from the window, her lips pressed together in a thin line.
“Pakhan,” she says, her tone respectful enough to pass with anyone else who doesn’t know her as well as I do. There’s a bite to it, soft enough to ignore, but I don’t.
“You’ve come to welcome me home? How courteous,” I say, settling down into my chair again.
Her nostrils flare. “I’ve come to ask what the hell you think you’re doing.”
“Be more specific,” I say mildly, because nothing enrages a person off their moral high ground like an uncaring attitude.
She tips her head, hair tucked behind one ear as if she needs it to hear her own voice better. “Draggingherhere. Dragging that bastard child along too. Planting them in the middle of everything we just bled to rebuild. What are you thinking?”
The wordbastardlands like a cigarette burn on my forearm. “You will not refer to my son like that again. Try it, and see what it buys you.”