It's midnight, and the Volkov castle is so quiet that even the wood seems to breathe slowly. But inside me, nothing is quiet anymore—nothing settled, nothing of the order I built through years of work and discipline still standing.
Everything that was clear has turned murky.
Everything that was controlled has become personal.
I tried to drink myself into oblivion. Maybe if I sink deep enough into alcohol, I won't feel anything anymore—I won't hear her voice, won't see the image of her tied to that chair or that gaze that accuses me without uttering a single word.
Yelena kept me company in the library for hours. She refilled my glass every time it emptied and moved through the room with her calculated grace, touching my shoulder, leaning against the arm of the chair, gliding past me like a cat in heat who knows exactly what she's doing.
Another time, I would have responded.
Another time, the game would have amused me.
Now all I felt was disgust.
Her gaze, her touch, the way she studied me like a trophy already won—it stirred a revulsion in me I can't fully explain, but it is real, visceral.
I do not want this woman in my life. Everything in me aches for another—the one with fire-colored hair and the soul of a demon.
Yelena finally gives up late, toward morning, after hours of circling me with her usual stubbornness.
"You'll come around eventually, and you'll see how well we fit," she says with a self-assured smile. Then she leans in to kiss my cheek—a gesture that makes me tense more than if she had challenged me outright—and leaves the room, her sweet perfume lingering behind.
I remain alone and breathe deeply, as if only now I've been allowed to draw air into my lungs after hours spent in her presence.
I rise abruptly from the armchair, leaving the glass half full on the desk, and step into the corridor without taking my coat. The cold air from the castle stone strikes my face and forces me to breathe more deeply.
The guards are at their posts—silent, upright—and as I approach, they incline their heads slightly.
"The girl's room," I say shortly.
There's no need for explanations.
One of them indicates the direction and the floor, and I head off without adding anything, feeling how each step carries me closer to something I know I shouldn't do.
Her door opens without a sound.
I find her sleeping deeply, exhausted.
Peaceful in a way that almost hurts.
She's naked, stretched across the white bed, and the moonlight slipping through the window traces the outline of her body in a way that feels unreal—almost painfully beautiful.
Her pale skin seems even more luminous in the dark. Her face is relaxed, free of fear, free of the tension she carries when she's awake. And her cinnamon-colored hair is scattered across the pillow like a warm stain in a cold painting.
For a moment, I remain motionless in the doorway, struck by an image that has nothing to do with my world.
She is fragile. Too beautiful. Too ill-suited to everything I represent.
I sit down in the armchair in the corner of the room and watch her in silence, letting the moon do the rest. Time seems to slow, as if between her and me there exists only the rhythm of her calm breathing and the distance I still keep.
I remember her taste.
The way she moaned beneath me.
That short, broken sound she made when I entered her for the first time—a mixture of pain and desire—and I feel the desire hit me again, warm and dangerous.
My body reacts before I can think.
I clench my teeth. Not now. Not like this.
No matter how much I want her, no matter how tightly my stomach knots when I look at her, I know exactly what it would mean to approach her that way. I know how easily desire could turn into something else—and how irreversible that act would be.
I curse my life silently, because I am torn between my desire for this woman and the hatred that burns in me at the same time—the hatred for the fact that, in my mind, she killed Gaston.
Gaston.
His name falls heavy.
And yet, looking at her now—sleeping, vulnerable—it is impossible to associate her with the blood on the floor.
At last, I rise and move closer to the bed, slowly, almost cautiously, as if I might shatter something simply by being there.
I pull the sheet over her body with care, covering her shoulders, her thighs—my gesture more instinctive than calculated.
It's protection. A simple, instinctive act. And the fact that it comes to me so naturally angers me more than anything, because I am not a man who protects on impulse. I am the one who calculates, who decides coldly and without hesitation.
I had clear plans—a life built on straight lines, on cold decisions and precise objectives, no deviations and no room for weaknesses that could soften my will.
There was no place for women with witch's eyes and fire-colored hair to disturb my balance or overturn the order I constructed so carefully.
And yet, because of her, I feel my firmness beginning to crack from the inside—almost imperceptibly, but enough to make me lose my certainty.
I step away from the bed before I do something I would regret. I leave the room without looking back and go straight to the office assigned to me, as if physical distance could restore the distance in my mind—or the heavier one in my heart.
I close the door behind me, pour a full glass without bothering to smell it, and drink it in a single swallow, feeling it burn down my throat and spread warmth through my chest.
Then another. And another. Until the taste becomes the only clear thing and everything else blurs.
I drink until the noise in my head begins to fade, until my thoughts dissolve into a tolerable murmur, and until, for a few hours, I manage to forget myself.
If you like the story, add it to your library ❤️