Page 150 of Dance of Thorns

“Hang on,” I slur. “Wait…Melinda, I didn’t…okay, I shouldn’t have gone in?—”

“But you did,” she says calmly, her hand tightening around the gun. "You took something from my room that you shouldn't have. I think you alsoreadsomething you shouldn't have."

She draws in a slow breath, the gun still pointing right at me.

"Didn't you," she purrs. "Lark."

41

BANE

“Niko?Eto ty?”

I smile as I shrug off my coat and hang it by the side door to the kitchen.

“Just me, Oksana!”

A second later, my father’s housekeeper pokes her head around the corner, beaming at me. “Bane! I did not know you were coming!”

“I wanted to surprise you.”

I grin, crossing the large kitchen to give her a big hug and a kiss on the cheek.

I’ve known Oksana since I was ten. She was already Peak Grandma then, and only looks even more the part as she gets older. Dad’s flat-out told her she can retire any time, and he’s happy to pay her a full salary and have her stay in the house to live out that retirement in style. She always says no.

I think she’s one of those people who equates “not working” with “one foot in the grave.”

I mean, sheisRussian.

“Kak dela, babushka?”

How are you, grandma?

Oksana clucks her tongue and shakes flour-dusted fingers at me. “Your Russian is getting rusty,zaychik.”

“I’m getting too old to be called little bunny,” I grumble.

She snickers at me. “I disagree…zaychik.”

I roll my eyes and glance at her hands. “What are you making?”

“Pelmeni.”

Fuck yeah. My stomach rumbles. Oksana makeskillerRussian dumplings.

“Are they ready? I could eat.”

She playfully slaps at my arm “Nyet, not until dinner. But you should stay.” She arches a brow at me. “Where is your lovely bride, by the way?”

There’s a sharp duality of feelings that twist in me when Oksana asks about her.

The first, of course, is the glowing warmth that I feel deep in my chest whenever I think about the woman I love. But the second, polar opposite feeling that I get at the exact same time is pain.

Pain andregret.

I knew about her addictions and her demons, and I knew about rehab. But the visceral sensation of my heart being sawed from my chest when she told me all the gritty details of that time in her life breaks me in two.

The times she could have been devoured by the world, and the times she could have died.