Page 116 of Tarnished Queen

She perks up, but her face twists in disgust. “We’ve only been here for, like, an hour. I saw you literally this morning. You and Nikolai have probably been going at it too much for you to miss me.”

“Ew, Elise! Don’t talk about that. Ever.”

“What?” she asks innocently. “Sisters talk about this kind of stuff. Besides, I shared a suite with you when we were all in Iceland. I saw things.”

The endless amount of compromising positions Elise could have caught us in flashes through my mind. I’m too horrified by the sheer magnitude of trauma I may have inflicted on my sister to speak.

“I mean, I came out one day and saw rumpled bedding on the sofa,” she says finally. “Your bra was hanging on a kitchen barstool. And I may be the one with red hair, but you’re the one with reactive skin. Nikolai just had to glance at you and you’d blush from head to toe. It was so obvious.”

Relief courses through me. So long as she didn’t see me naked, I can move through life guilt-free. “Well, still. I don’t want to talk about…thatwith you.”

“You’re pregnant, Belle. Cat is out of the bag. I know how the X’s and O’s of that whole shebang work.”

“There’s no cat in any bag,” I argue. “There is simply human decency and privacy. I’m not going to pretend I’m a nun, but I do not want to talk about that with my little sister or anyone, please and thank you.”

“Okay. No sex talk,” she says. “No discussing the sweaty, steamy lovemaking you and your husband have partaken in since I left.”

I bury my face in my hands. “Moving on.”

“Yes. We won’t talk about the filthy, raunchy—”

“I said we’re moving on!” I practically shout. “How are you and Howard getting along?”

“Good,” Elise says, just as another voice chimes in from the back, “Fantabulous!”

I frown. “Was that Howard?”

“Yeah. He’s in the kitchen making grilled cheeses.”

I lean close to the screen like I’m whispering in Elise’s ear. “And you said all that sex stuff in front of him? Elise, he’s your dad!”

“What? I’m not the one doing it,” she shrugs. Then she grins. “There you go again. You’re blushing so hard. You could see that blush from space.”

I narrow my eyes. “I will hang up on you. That’s the benefit of you being so far away. I can turn you off whenever I want.”

“Yeah, but you don’t want to,” she says confidently.

I want to slam the computer shut just to prove her wrong, but I can’t. She’s right—I’d sit here and talk to her forever if I could. If teleportation existed, I’d be there to brush her hair and paint her toenails and lie next to her watching trash TV until the wee hours of the morning.

“Don’t worry, I’m not listening,” Howard calls from the background. “I have earbuds in. I’m listening to a podcast. Elise put me onto it on the flight.”

Elise grins. I can’t remember the last time I saw her so genuinely and openly happy. “Yeah, by the way, tell Nikolai thanks for paying for the Wi-Fi on the flight. I don’t know if he knows he did that, but he did. Anyway, it’s a true crime podcast. We both like true crime, isn’t that cool?”

“That’s great.” I really do mean it. Howard and I may have our own stuff to work through eventually, but when it comes to his relationship with Elise, I’m at peace. I want this for her. She deserves to know her dad and have at least one parent who isn’t an active hot mess. And clearly, she’s happy. What more could I want?

What more could I want?The question rings through me like a gong, reverberating way further than I expected.

I could want a normal life, for starters. One where a crazy woman isn’t tracking down my family and trying to kill them.

I could want a husband who doesn’t find unconscious, bloody men in his front yard.

I could want a small, cute house with no security shack out front.

I could want my sister sitting next to me on the bed while I get ready for my date instead of languishing in a hotel room in another country.

I don’t have those things… but I do have Nikolai. Doesn’t that outweigh the rest?

“How are you and Nicky Boy doing?” Elise asks, her voice cutting through my thoughts. “And you can keep all of the naked details to yourself.”

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