Page 132 of A War Apart

I was back at the room before I realized it. I pushed open the door, and Han was there. His eyes swept over my body, drinking me in, and I was in his arms, his lips on mine.

“Mila,” he said. My name. Not a stranger’s. “Mila.”

“I’m back,” I whispered. “I’m home.”

Epilogue

Alexey

Istared at the not-so-distant city between the slats of wood that made up my prison. The sun was getting low behind the palace, lighting up the white stone and golden domes in a brilliant shade of orange. If I hadn’t been inside it that afternoon, I could almost imagine it hadn’t changed.

But I had been there, and it had changed. A giant chasm split the throne room floor. The bodies undoubtedly still lay at the bottom of that pit where they’d fallen. I shuddered to think how close I’d been to becoming one of them. Then again, how unwelcome would that death be compared to what awaited me? Death by hanging was a strong possibility for my future. Exile, possibly, if I was particularly lucky. I didn’t want to be exiled, but I supposed, when considered with detachment, it was preferable to death.

I heard footsteps approaching, but I didn’t turn. More guards, or possibly more prisoners. It was too early after the battle for executions to begin. No one would be coming for me yet.

“Alexey.”

I heard my name, half-whispered, and turned so quickly something in my neck cracked.

Sofia.

She stood there watching me. Izolda stood next to her, I noted in the back of my mind, but I only had eyes for Sofia. A scarf was tied around her head, and my fingers ached to tear it off, to see her beautiful hair.

She wore an apron, too, and I saw smears of blood on it. Her own? My eyes narrowed as I scanned her for any wounds. Nothing obvious. She wouldn’t have been in the battle. She’d probably been working in the med tent. Unsurprising. She wasn’t the type to sit quietly and wait for things to happen. She had to be involved somehow.

Izolda muttered something I couldn’t hear and turned to leave. Sofia looked after her as though she wanted her to stay, but she didn’t say anything. After a moment, she looked back at me.

“Why are you here?” I asked, more harshly than I intended. Not that I didn’t intend it to be harsh. She was the reason I was here, at least in part. When she didn’t answer, I stepped closer, pressing her for an answer. “Did you come to gloat?” Vicious, beautiful woman. She’d used me, played me like the fool I was. And I’d gone along with it willingly.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was breathless. “I’m so sorry.”

Something in my chest cracked. “Was any of it real?” I’d asked her the same thing yesterday morning, when I’d helped her escape from the tsar’s dungeons. She hadn’t answered then. I watched her face, searching for a response. She couldn’t have fabricated everything. The taste of her lips, how she felt in my arms…those were tools she’d used against me, yes. But the tears she’d shed in front of me, the laughter, the admiration in hergaze. I couldn’t have imagined all of it. She had to feel something for me.

The first time I’d kissed her, when she fell apart with fear from some remembered trauma; that had been real. As had the rest of the evening, when she let me hold her as she cried away her pain on my chest, sitting out in the frigid air overlooking the ocean.

And the tears of fear and shame in her eyes when she’d let me take her to bed the first time, before I left for battle? That was the most real of all. I’d never understood her. Loved her madly, needed her desperately, but never understood her. I watched her face, wishing she would answer my question, or at least give me some sort of a sign.

“I’m married.”

I flinched as the words left her lips. Married? She couldn’t be married. She’d given herself to me. She was mine. Fully, completely, in every way. She wasmine,dammit!

Father’s Blood, I’d lost my mind over this woman. She’d used me so skillfully, I hadn’t even noticed I was being used.

“I see,” I said, praying my emotion didn’t show in my voice.

“Alexey, I—” She reached through the slats of wood, but I stepped back. If I let her touch me, I’d be well and truly lost.

“Don’t.” She couldn’t touch me. Talk. I needed to talk. “Who is he?”

She pursed her lips, and I glanced away, trying not to remember the feel of those lips on mine. “A commander in the tsar’s army.”

“Not Tsar Miroslav’s, I take it.” Of course not. I’d been making love to her, telling her all about Tsar Miroslav’s strategy, trying to impress her, so she could pass it all to her husband, a commander for Borislav. What a damned fool I was. A besotted, idiotic fool.

“Miroslav is dead.”

“I know. I was there.” After the pit had opened up in the floor of the throne room, after most of the tsar’s court was dead, Miroslav and Borislav had faced each other. Tsar Miroslav hadn’t had his right-hand man to protect him anymore, no Lord Kazimir to keep him safe.

“He was a monster,” she whispered.

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