Page 70 of Tarnished Queen

“You should have backed off!” she yells. “My entire life, you’ve always been so protective and overbearing. I get it, I do. Our mom was shitty, and you protected me from a lot of that. But you were so busy protecting me that we were hardly sisters, Belle.”

Her words slice through me like a hot knife through butter. I feel gutted to my core. “What?”

“I love you,” she says flatly, her anger melting into a stony distance. “Of course I do. But you were so busy pretending to be my mom that I never knew what it would be like to have a sister.”

“We’ve always been sisters. We always will be.”

“But we didn’t fight about clothes or over who got to hold the remote. We didn’t listen to music or talk about boys. You were always pretending to be my mom. Always. Even when I never asked you to.”

“Well, someone had to be,” I say softly.

“It wasn’t until we came here and lived with Nikolai that I felt like we could be sisters. Like you backed off a bit and let me breathe.”

Elise has changed so much since we’ve come to New York. I assumed it was the new environment and Nikolai putting us up in fancy hotel suites and mansions.

But it was because of me. Because I was too distracted to hover over her all day. Because I gave her room to be herself.

I guess I always just wanted to hold her close. I never realized I was suffocating her while doing it.

“I was just…” I shake my head. “I was trying to take care of you, Elise.”

“I know you were. And you did. But we don’t get to have both, I guess.” A tear rolls down her cheek and she swipes it away. “Instead of going through our terrible childhoods together, you went through it alone. You shielded me from a bunch of it and lied to me and… and it made me feel like I was going through it alone, too.”

My heart cracks open. “Elise, I’m so sorry. That isn’t what I wanted for you. I never wanted—”

“God, Belle.” She shakes her head. “Stop! It’s not about what you wanted for me. It’s about what I wanted!”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Her jaw clenches. “And what I wanted was a sister I could talk to. Someone I could be honest with about what was going on at home. About our family. Maybe I would have wanted to reach out to him. Maybe I would have wanted a relationship. But you took that away from me.”

“He took it away,” I insist. “He’s the one who left you behind. He left you with Mom. I was just trying to fix it.”

“Yeah? And how did that go for you?” she demands.

I open my mouth to respond, but the words lodge in my throat.

Elise shakes her head. “Get out, Belle.”

“No, Elise, please,” I rasp. “We can talk. Can we figure this out?”

“You don’t get to ask anything of me right now. Just leave.”

Part of me would feel better if Elise was yelling. If she was screaming and raging out at me, then I could tell myself this is just like the hundreds of times before that I pissed her off and she forgave me.

But the calm, clear, icy way she asks me to leave… I’m worried she’ll never ask me to come back. I want to say something, anything, to convince her to let me stay.

But before I can, Elise turns into her bathroom and slams the door closed.

22

NIKOLAI

The knock on my office door sends Christo jumping out of his chair.

I arch a brow in his direction. “Nervous?”

“The last man who was in here wanted to kill me,” he says. “So, yeah. Nervous is a good word.”

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