Page 61 of Dance with Death

Not yet.

My heart hurts to see the state of her as she crashes into Nikolai. She looks thin, frail, exhausted, but more horrifyingly, she looks determined…determined as she tries to run back into the room after begging for death.

It punches into my gut when my mind clears enough to see the red. The disturbing crimson smears on her left wrist and hand. More smears across her chest as it drips from a short line on her neck.

“What the fuck…” My voice is quiet at first until I make sense of what’s happening, of what she tried to do. “What the fuck, Anya?!”

I don’t care about my place in this fucked up world. I storm past Nikolai and reach for Anya’s bloody wrist, taking it in my hand. Her eyes fall to where I hold her for a beat, then lift to meet mine with a look of resignation mixed with shame. The look shows me a fissure in her existence that threatens to split her soul apart. It has me ready to set off a fucking bomb in this place.

But then she’s pulled from my grip as I’m pulled from her. Vigo takes me by the shoulders and spins me before slamming me face-first into the wall.

“Don’t touch my slave,” he sneers before releasing me.

I spin to face him, but before I can punch the look off his entitled face, Anya’s sobs draw me away.

“Let me go,” she cries, fighting against Nikolai’s hold. “Let me go, let me go, let mego!”

“Why would I let you go,rabynya? So you can attempt the coward’s way out again? Try to kill yourself?” Nikolai pulls his hand back and slaps her. “Howdareyou do something so goddamn selfish.”

Nikolai’s shoulders shake, his expression an unusual mixture of rage and fear as Anya crumbles before my eyes, devolving into sobs of heartache so deafening that it brings me to my knees.

Vigo grabs Anya away from Nikolai. “She needs to be punished for this. I’m taking her to the board. She’s been with the four families far too long to allow this sort of behavior, and I willnotgive her the satisfaction of death. She hasn’t earned it because I haven’t finished with her yet.”

Anya chuckles darkly. “He hasn’t finished with me yet, Nikolai. I haven’tearneddeath.” Her joyless laugh twists her features into a grim scowl.

Nikolai’s brow furrows, his eyes narrowing in concentration as he looks at Anya. She’s sinking away from Vigo, her body limp and exhausted in her sobbing, like a wilted rose trying to sink back into the Earth from which it sprouted.

Nikolai’s eyes flicker, his brow line straightens out, and he looks at me pointedly, though he speaks to Vigo.

“Good. I’ll bring the boy, then, too. Lock them together. I guarantee he won’t allow her to attempt this again while her punishment is being decided.”

Only a man as fucking arrogant as Nikolai Mikhailov would put his slaves alone together, knowing that one would prevent the other from committing suicide.

He wasn’t wrong.

Anya cries, “Please, please punish me, but don’t hurt him anymore. Don’t hurt him. Don’t hurt Ezra.”

Thathurts me.

I hurt so badly because of her,forher.

I feel everything she’s feeling as if I were feeling it myself, and it’s the most fucking painful thing I’ve ever known.

Vigo’s already dragging her away down the hallway. I follow as Nikolai stalks after them. We head back downstairs to the ground level and pass the empty ballroom on our right.

Just past the ballroom, we turn right down a hallway, but it dead ends about five strides ahead. At the end, there’s a pair of wooden, double doors propped open—the entrance to the boardroom.

This alcove in front of the doors is brown and bleak and formal. Leo Leblanc appears from behind the doors, sensing the presence of some of his guests.

“Come on in,” he says to Nikolai and Vigo, but tilts his head looking at me and Anya. “I’m sorry, was there something wrong with their shackles, or…”

The poor guy wracks his brain trying to figure out why Nikolai and Vigo brought their slaves along with them.

“No,” Nikolai says. “We have a matter of punishment to arrange for a slave. Is there a room nearby we can lock them in until the meeting is over? She cannot be left alone.”

Leo looks Anya up and down, seeing her bloodied, sobbing form and seems to have trouble sorting out what’s going on. I just want to get to her so I can hold her but these giant pieces of shit stand in my way.

“She tried to commit suicide,” Nikolai clarifies impatiently.

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