“The pastor isn’t here yet,” he says. “We have some time before we lower her down. I thought we could take a walk.”
I know the walk is for my benefit. Leo knows everything. He could tell I was close to losing it.
“I’m trying,” I whisper. “But how do you get used to it? All this… death?”
“You just do,” he says. “Ariel always knew that it might end like this. So did I.” He shakes his head. “But there’s no point going back, Willow. No point playing and replaying what happened. What we could have done differently. What’s done is done.”
“I am grateful to Ariel,” I say softly. “And I respect and admire her. But… I can’t stop thinking about Pasha. That he’s alone in there. Does that make me a bad person?”
“No,” he tells me. “That just makes you a mother.”
“Do you feel that way, too?” I ask, almost hopefully. “Like a… like a father?”
“All the fucking time,” he says.
I turn around to face him. His expression gives nothing away. It might as well be a normal day. We may as well be a normal couple out for a normal walk. The fantasy from our dinner the other night lives on, as sick and twisted as it’s become.
“Is this how you handled your brother’s death?”
He laughs bitterly. “Not at all. I was out of control when he died.”
“And now?”
“I’m older,” he says. “I’m wiser. I know that raging against fate never changes anything. So I choose to focus on what I can change. I can’t bring Ariel back, but I can save our son. I can avenge her death. I can avenge Pavel’s death.”
“I’m surprised you’re taking the time to bury her. I figured you’d be on the warpath already.”
“Ariel believed that death was the end. She never much cared what happened to her body after she died.” He shrugged. “I may not be raging, but we all have to figure out a way to say goodbye. This funeral is mine.”
I reach out and curl my hand around his arm again. “I’ll give you one thing: she has a great view.”
“She deserves it,” he says. “She deserves so much more.”
We stand silently for a while, surveying the valley opening up below us. The village is clustered on the side of a steep mountain, clinging on for dear life. The horizon looks like it goes on forever.
“I have to go in, Leo,” I say softly. “I have to give myself to Belov. At least on the surface. I have to—”
“Enough.”
He doesn’t raise his voice. In fact, he seems to get quieter. Yet the command in that one word stops me immediately.
“You are not going in. Especially now. I won’t let you put yourself in danger. Don’t bring this up again.”
“Then what do I do, Leo? Do I just sit back and do nothing?”
“No. You just trust me.”
I do trust Leo. And he told me once that fear can be a powerful tool. It can cause you to freeze in place, to falter and die.
Or it can drive you to act.
I believed him when he said that. I trusted him. And it’s how I know that, right now, my fear is pushing me to act.
With or without him.
35
WILLOW
I’m wide awake when Leo gets into bed beside me.
The moment his weight sinks into the mattress next to me, I turn towards him and curl myself into the crook of his arm. I can tell he’s surprised—we haven’t done this since before I was taken. He tenses and I wonder if he’s going to push me away.
Then he relaxes, curls his arm around me, and gives me his warmth.
“It was a pretty funeral,” I tell him, the darkness making it easier for me to speak. “She would have liked it.”
“She wouldn’t have cared either way,” Leo corrects. His voice is raspy, his breath tinged with alcohol. “But I’m glad you thought so.”
“Do you think about death a lot?” I ask.
“Not really.”
“But you see it all the time, in a way not many people do. Up close and personal.”
“Exactly,” he says. “I see enough of it that I don’t want to spend the rest of my time thinking about it. In any case, death doesn’t scare me.”
The funny thing is, I believe him. If there’s one man alive that Death itself is probably terrified of, it’s Leo Solovev.
“Well, it scares me,” I whisper.
“Why?” he asks. “Death has to be better than life.”