Page 53 of Her Darkest Possession
He reaches across the desk, his hand open. I place mine in his, and his fingers close around mine, warm and strong. "Don't be. There's nothing for you to be nervous about."
"But." I meet his eyes. "What if he's not sorry. What if he stands there and defends what he did or tries to say it was justified."
"Then he will face the consequences," he says simply.
"That's what worries me."
With every passing second after my sentencing of Grisha, clarity continues to dawn on me. I know better than anyone else that somethinghaschanged in me, and not necessarily for the better.
The rush that I felt watching Grisha die. The knowledge that I have the power—through my husband, but power nonetheless—to hold life and death in my hands. To know that there is now a consequence for those who've hurt me in the past, and for those who might try to hurt me in the future.
I can't pretend it wasn't intoxicating.
What kind of mother will I be if this darkness keeps growing?
No, not even that. What kind ofpersonam I becoming?
I've spent two years building walls after what Grant Bennet did to me. For those two years, I thought I was building walls to protect myself from the world. But now that Anatoly has breached those walls, and dismantled them brick by brick, I'm finally getting a glimpse of the dark and angry creature that took shape during those two years.
And along with that glimpse comes the realization that the walls were never to protect myself from the world.
It was to protect the world from my own hurt and anger.
From someone who finds satisfaction in blood and retribution.
Anatoly squeezes my hand, and snaps me back out of my spiraling thoughts.
"All your life, you've played by the rules," he says, his voice low but intense. "You thought those rules would be enough to keep you safe."
I swallow hard, feeling exposed by how easily he's read my thoughts.
"But the people who hurt you." He tightens his fingers around mine briefly. "They never followed those rules. And when you turned to those same rules in the aftermath, what did you find?"
"Nothing," I whisper.
"Exactly." He leans forward. "You found that their rules are as worthless as their lies. You learned that rules without consequences are meaningless,printsessa."
I nod.
"You can recoil at the thought of what those consequences bring," he continues. "That's natural. That's human. But you cannot recoil from the very concept of consequences themselves. Because only through consequence can rules have meaning."
I feel tears gathering at the corners of my eyes, though I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps because someone finally understands.
"You've known this all along, and you faced it with unflinching eyes," Anatoly says, his voice softening slightly. "When you watched me kill the men who murdered your parents. When you sentenced Grisha. You understood the weight of that consequence."
He's right. I didn't.
"You can face it again now."
I take a deep breath, steadying myself. "But I'm afraid that I'll be addicted to the idea of revenge and power. That all of thesethings are corrupting me from the good person that I thought I was."
"No," Anatoly shakes his head. "There's nothing that's been corrupted. And you will always be the good person that you were before the monsters of the world took advantage of that goodness. What you're doing is recognizing the power that you now wield. You're finally understanding just how strong you can be, and how righteous you can be."
Before I can answer, the door opens, and Vassily walks in. His usual swagger is gone. He stands just inside the doorway, eyes downcast, hands at his sides. When he finally looks up, his gaze flickers to me, then quickly away.
"Vasya," Anatoly says coldly. "Do you know why you're here?"
Vassily shifts his weight, still avoiding direct eye contact with either of us. "I have an idea."
