Page 134 of Kingmakers, Graduation

Sloane’s eyes meet mine in the mirror.

“Trouble in paradise?” she says.

Ever the spy. She was probably watching Adrik’s and my entire conversation.

Adrik respects Sloane more than almost anyone. Probably more than he respects me. If I were going to be jealous of anything, I should be jealous of that.

“I might have made a mistake coming here.”

“Maybe you did,” Sloane says, evenly.

I turn to face her, anger rising all over again.

“You don’t think I could do what you do?”

Sloane picks up a folded towel, drying her hands with easy grace.

“You haven’t put in the time and you haven’t done the work. You want to be a queen and you don’t even speak the language.”

“I’m learning as fast as I can,” I hiss.

“This isn’t a classroom. There’s no room for mistakes.”

“Yet you’ve made a few of your own,” I snap back at her.

Sloane doesn’t rise to the bait. Her calm is a steady vibration that fills the room, pressing against my ear drums. Her eyes hold mine, bright and clear and hypnotic.

“You think I came to Russia to kill Ivan with guns blazing,pew pewI’m a fuckin’ gangster? When I broke into his monastery, I knew my life was stretched out like a thread across a pair of shears. I made one tiny mistake and the tide turned against me in an instant. If Ivan didn’t happen to have a tiny kernel of humanity inside him, I would have met a horrific end. If you think any of these other men are Ivan, they’re not. They will skin you alive. They don’t care that you’re beautiful, they don’t care that you’re special—you’re nothing to them.”

I lift my chin.

“I’ve never needed anyone to save me yet.”

Sloane looks me up and down. It’s hard not to shrink before that stare, especially when I know she’s seeing every last detail: the dark circles under my eyes, the motor oil under my nails, the little red marks on my arms where I pinch myself when I’m stressed.

Sloane says, “I was a lone wolf once, too. You feel strong when you think you don’t need anybody, but the truth is you just don’t have anybody.”

I’m stripped in front of her. Exposed.

I don’t have my family here. I don’t even have Adrik’s support.

Enemies on all sides, friends who barely tolerate me …

Iamalone, and I don’t know how to be any other way.

“Ivan treats you like an equal,” I say. “You’d never put up with less.”

“Actually,” Sloane says, her voice gentler than I’ve heard it before, “I escaped from Ivan the first chance I got. Then I came back to him naked in rain-boots, asking for his help. Our relationship changed when I allowed myself to be vulnerable.”

This is hard for me to understand. Hard for me to even picture.

“I don’t know how to do that,” I say.

“Then practice,” Sloane says. “While you’re working on your Russian.”

She leaves me in the powder room, the air dull and void without her.

I sink down onto an overstuffed chaise, thinking for a long time before returning to the party.

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