Page 144 of Kingmakers, Year Four

“What can I offer, then?” she says.

“You can offer yourself,” my father says. “Your mind, your body, your soul, your loyalty, your life . . . to my son.”

Nix turns to look at me, and for some reason, it’s harder for her to meet my eyes. She bites her lower lip, her head bowed, hair hanging down over her face.

I cross the space between her and tilt up her chin so she has to look at me.

“I want you,” I say to her. “I want your wildness. I want your passion. I want you to love me the way you love the wind and the water and the outdoors. I want you to be untamable, except by me. I want you to be my wife.”

She takes a deep breath, holding my gaze at last.

“Yes,” she says. “I will.”

“You’ll come to America with me. We’ll rebuild everything your father tried to destroy.”

Nix’s lower lip trembles. I’m sure she’s thinking of her home outside of Kyiv, the acres of land, the sprawling compound that will sit empty, abandoned, without her or her father or any of his men.

“Will you miss Kyiv?” I ask her.

She shakes her head, slowly.

“It will always be empty, whether I return to it or not. Home is the people you love, not a building, not a place. I want to go home with you, Rafe.”

I love the sound of my name on her lips—my real name.

I grab her by the shoulders and I kiss her, the hardest I’ve ever kissed her.

She belongs to me now, fully and completely.

No lies between us.

Only the brutal truth.

Our fathers were friends, and then enemies. Now the house of Moroz is destroyed, and the Petrovs live on. Nix is one of us.

“Until Rafe buys you a better ring,” my father says.

He pulls the gold ring off the pinky of his right hand, slipping it onto the third finger of Nix’s left.

She turns her hand so the inscription catches the light:

Fides Est In Sanguinem

Loyalty In Blood

We had intendedto take Dean, Hedeon, Kade, Sabrina, Anna, and Leo back to Kingmakers as quickly as possible, hoping to sneakthem back onto the island to avoid the uproar of leaving without permission.

Unfortunately, three of the six were in no state to travel until they’d recovered several days in the hospital.

In the meantime, my father had to travel to Moscow to clean up the disastrous mess made by Danyl Kuznetsov’s visit to St. Petersburg.

Dominik was hauled before the high table, after killing Danyl and five of hisbratoks, and shooting Foma Kushnir.

Dom argued that Danyl attacked first, intending to kill Dom and his men, then frame them for murdering my father and siphoning off the earnings of his empire. Danyl was under the mistaken apprehension that my father was indeed dead. With Dom out of the way, Danyl and Foma hoped to take control of St. Petersburg, exiling my mother to our holdings in America.

It was clear that several members of the high table shared Danyl’s beliefs, because they were thoroughly shocked when my father strode into the Bolshoi Theater, very much alive and angrier than they had ever seen him.

Several tense and volatile hours followed while my father argued with the otherPakhans.They were furious that his imprisonment had been kept secret, and even angrier that Danyl had been killed. My father retorted that their treachery justified the secrecy, and that Danyl Kuznetsov got precisely what he deserved.

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