Page 34 of Dance with Death

“I left the room alone. All of her possessions remain except for a few items that were sent with her to the Vittoris.”

The fucking Vittoris.

“Why?” I asked.

“To remind you. Topunishyou. I want you to smell her on your pillow at night. I want you to see the last thing she wore. I want you to be reminded in every possible fucking way that she was here, you had the pleasure of her company, and now she’s gone. Because you broke her. You stripped her of her obedience, willed her to misbehave, and tempted her to fall in love with you. I want you to live in that shame, that guilt. She’s gone from both our lives now and it is all because ofyou.”

I open my mouth to speak, but he steps back and slams the door shut. I don’t even react. I don’t lunge for the door. I let him shut it and lock me in.

He wasn’t wrong, but he wasn’t right, either.

I had broken her…not her soul, but her armor.

I had tempted her…not to fall in love, but to hope.

I step forward, moving into the room and everything I see is Anya.

Unease strikes hard and fast in the center of my chest, causing my body to shake. I put my hands on top of my head, lacing my fingers together as I pace through my anxiety beside the wardrobe.

“Goddammit,” I mutter under my breath, but I’m not satisfied with the intensity of my cursing. “Fuck!”

My fist comes down and slams against the closed wardrobe door. I pull my arm back immediately, shaking out my hand against the pain of instantly bruised knuckles. I instinctively wrap my hand around my aching fist and blink against a vision, a memory…Anya pinned to the wardrobe door with my body as I kissed her.

This is my fault.

This is all my own goddamn fault.

I was the one who suggested we come to her room to have sex that night. I wanted her to have a memory of me to hold onto in case Nikolai ended me.

That was sofuckingstupid of me, and now Anya is paying the price for it.

“Fuck!”

I need her. I need her so desperately that I would offer up my own goddamn life if it meant I could spend one more minute with her. The universe is playing a sick joke on us—allowing us to find each other, giving each of us our soul mate under the worst of conditions, only to rip us apart again.

I feel empty.

Hollow.

My feet have me moving toward the dresser, wondering if he’s left something of hers behind, some token or memento I can cling to. I open the top drawer and find that it’s full. Everything is still here—her precisely folded panties, her tattered and worn pointe shoes.

I reach for the pale pink shoes, dingy and scuffed from endless practice. The ribbons that would tie them to her ankles are wrapped around the slippers, holding them together. I draw the pair closer, clutching them in tight hands, pressing them to my chest.

Shit.

It hurts.

I pause.

There’s a full drawer of underwear here.

I set the ballet shoes on the top of the dresser and start pulling open drawers. Nearly all her belongings are still here. I go for the bottom right drawer and my heart falls into my stomach to see the same green and pink floral-patterned box that she’d shown to me in my early days here at Mikhailov Manor.

The pictures of her sister, Lidia, are all still here. Everything that held worth to her is still here.

He didn’t even have the basic human decency to send her with her own goddamn underwear.

My heart leaps and rushes.

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