“Yes. But I haven’t decided what he’s going to say yet.”
“I imagine it won’t be flattering.”
“Probably not.”
“Maybe he was right about you,” she mutters under her breath.
I roll my eyes. “What did His Highness say about me now?”
She pushes herself off the bed and heads for the door. “You can ask him yourself. He’s granting you an audience.”
I drop my pencil and get to my feet. “What? He is? When?”
“Now,” Yulia says. “Come with me.”
I abandon my vandalism immediately and follow her out of the room. On the walk there, I try to compose myself. I compile a list in my head of all the things I want to bring up with him. As it turns out, it’s a very long list.
I’m so distracted I forget to pick up my feet. I trip on the bottom step of the grand staircase and again on the edge of a carpet that runs the length of the absurdly long hallway.
“Calm down, girl,” Yulia scolds lightly just before she opens the door. “Showing fear will get you nowhere.”
“Fear is all I have right now.”
She grabs my hand so suddenly that I don’t even gasp. It’s not a cruel gesture, anyway. When she looks at me, her blue eyes are comforting and protective. So completely unlike her son’s.
“Listen to me, Olivia: the only way to get him to listen to you is if you have his respect.”
I pull back, uncomfortable with the way she’s gripping me. “I obviously don’t have that. Nor do I know how to get it.”
“Hold your own,” she tells me. “Stand your ground.”
“Against him?” I balk. “He’s… he’s…”
An Adonis. A beast. An angel of death. I’m not short on synonyms, but I’m certainly not going to share any of my first choices with his mother.
But she gets the general gist of things. “He’s a titan,” she says, which also seems like a pretty fitting description. “And do you know the kind of person who stands up to a titan?”
“Someone suicidal?”
She smiles. “Someone brave.”
I don’t have time to tell her that I’m not brave before she opens the door and shoves me into the room.
It’s a cavernous space. A sitting area with couches clustered together off to one side. A large display case full of what appear to be weapons lurks in the opposite corner. Between the two sits the biggest desk I’ve ever seen, like it was carved from the bones of the earth itself.
Two arched windows set in the wall offer an uninterrupted view of the garden. They’ve been pushed open a crack. I can feel the cool breeze washing in from outside.
I find my eyes straying back to the glass display case. I’m no weapons expert, but some of these things look like they got their first use back when people still lived in castles and launched catapults at each other. I see bows and arrows, spears and harpoons, shields and armor scarred with the marks of war.
What kind of man collects such vicious-looking things?
A little voice in the back of my head gives me the obvious answer: the kind of man to whom violence is second nature.
The same man is now looking at me with festering impatience. The sunlight catches his face from the side, casting half in light and half in shadow. He looks unspeakably beautiful.
“You wanted to speak to me,” Aleks intones. “So, speak.”
“A crossbow?” I blurt, stalling for time. “You’re a walking cliché.”
He sighs. “I’m a collector.”
“So you don’t use it? Hunting peasants for sport, or something along those lines?”
“I can use it if the need arises.”
All the charm he exuded at the airport is gone. I wonder how I ever saw it to begin with. All I see now is menace. Aggression. A saw-toothed edge of a man.
And whatever meager confidence I came in here with is wilting on the vine. Yulia’s words keep echoing in my head, but I hear them in my father’s voice.
Hold your own.
Stand your ground.
Living is for the brave.
Simple words. The kind you’d find in a fortune cookie at some strip mall Chinese restaurant. They seem wildly out of place in this room, with this threat staring me down.
“Did you come here to waste my time?” he asks when I keep fidgeting in the silence.
“I didn’t come here at all, remember?” I remind him acidly. “You took me.”
“I’m assuming you have a point to make. Do us all a favor and get to it.”
I square my shoulders and look him right in the eye, ignoring every instinct in my body. “I want to know that my family is okay.”
“They were released the moment we cleared the street,” he says.
I frown. “How do I even know that’s true? What’s the proof?”
“My word.”
I snort. “I hope you can understand why that means nothing to me.”
“I’m not interested in understanding much about you, Olivia,” he says. “I think that puts us at an impasse.”
“An impasse implies that both parties have tried to compromise. But in our case, you’re the one holding all the cards. You have all the power.”
Aleks cocks his head to the side and gives me a smile that makes my insides tremble.
The attraction I felt for him still exists. Seeing him tie up my family, threaten my brother, and abduct me didn’t kill those feelings. It just made the tingling concentrated between my legs a thousand times more shameful.
“That’s right,” Aleks says with a nod. “I do have all the power. Your brother would do well to remember that.”
“He’s just doing his job.”
“And I’m doing mine.”
I shake my head. “This is not a job.”
“No?” he drawls. “Then tell me what it is. Tell me who I am. I’m simply dying to know.”
“You’re just some low life thug! A criminal whose mistakes are catching up to him.”
“Let’s suspend reality for a moment and assume that’s true,” he says casually, leaning back in his chair. “If I go down, I’m bringing everyone down with me. That includes your brother, Olivia. And now, it includes you.”
“My brother can take you.”
“You’re overestimating him.”
“I’m not. I know him.”
He springs forward so fast that I don’t even have time to back up. He stops right in front of me, and I’m glad I didn’t back away.
Stand your ground. If nothing else, maybe I can take the advice literally.
“But you don’t know me,” he hisses. “And trust me, little girl: you don’t want to.”
I draw in a shuddering breath. “You’re right about that. I already know enough.”
Aleks’s eyes glisten with the promise of violence. “If that were true, you’d know not to push me.”
“I’ve been confined to that room for almost two days. You’d probably keep me there forever if I hadn’t pushed for this meeting.”
He doesn’t respond. I’m not naive enough to believe I’ve made any leeway, but I’ll take any opening I can get.