Page 17 of The Bone Doll (The Ruthenian Chronicle #1)
The Charade
Syra touched the wall in her room. Even inside, she could feel the leshy’s fury. Crushing, oppressive. It seemed like a strange companion to the vast emptiness inside her.
She wanted to be with Viktor. To kiss him.
To do more than kiss him. But he had lied about who he was.
She tried to understand why. His father seemed entirely unpleasant, and Ruthenians seemed to place quite a deal of import on nobility.
But she could not quite understand how his parents would change how she saw him.
Viktor was kind and generous and aspiring to be better.
Not to mention striking with his orange hair.
She told herself that she forgave him, though she still felt a little hollow inside.
A knock sounded at the door and she turned. Viktor entered, smelling of wine and cinnamon. That hollowness shrunk, and in its stead, a soft warmth glowed. She stepped closer and placed a chaste kiss on his lips. He tasted just how he smelled, and it left her tongue tingling.
He caught her about the waist, sending trills of heat through her, and lowered his mouth to her ear. “Don’t fight the leshy.”
Syra stiffened. “What?”
“Please, don’t fight the leshy.” He drew her close like a lover, but his words were not sweet. “Leave.”
“My Pathfinder is expecting silver.” She pulled back an inch, trying to read his expression. “And your– your father said if I didn’t bind the leshy, you would wish you’d never been born.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said, pressing his forehead to hers. “I care about you.”
She wriggled further back. Something was wrong. “What are you talking about?”
Viktor looked as though she had shoved her hand into his chest and squeezed his heart hard. “I want you to go home, so don’t fight the leshy.”
“I’ll go home once I’ve faced it,” she said.
He shook his head. “The Bone Doll will win. And you can’t win.”
“Viktor, I don’t understand.”
Anguish painted his features. “My father wants to control the leshy.”
“The Bone Doll will push it back,” she said. “It will be its own creature, but it won’t be close enough to harm your house.”
“My father wants to enslave the leshy,” Viktor said.
Syra went utterly still, her thoughts tangling. “He wants to trap the leshy? He wants to bind it to an object? He wants to control it?”
“Yes,” Viktor said.
“Why?”
“To make the forest bend to his will,” he said. “What lord can say they control the trees and the vines and all the wild things in their lands? He wants power, like every Ruthenian boyar.”
The Bone Doll twitched in her belt purse.
“He needs to bind it to something,” she said. “Like the Bone Doll. But I can’t make talismans. I’m not strong enough.”
“That is why I want you to leave,” Viktor said. “He would want you to stay to control it. And he would control you. Go back to the tundra before he has reason to stop you.”
She staggered backwards, overcome with nausea. “You knew this. You led me more than 150 miles from my home, knowing I would never see my family or my clan again. And you didn’t tell me.”
Viktor averted his gaze, his arms hanging limply at his sides.
“What else haven’t you told me?” Her fingers closed around the beaded necklace. It was a chain, trapping her, leashing her. “What else have you lied about? Were those touches, those kisses all ploys? Keep me distracted so I didn’t realize you were taking me prisoner?”
“I didn’t lie about anything else,” he said quietly. “I just wanted you.”
Syra stared at him for a long moment. She knew Viktor admired the heroes in his stories and wanted to emulate them.
But this… He had fashioned an entire charade so that she liked him, wanted him back.
When he knew he was taking her prisoner.
When he knew she should hate him. The necklace snapped, the beads falling to the floor.
Viktor knelt to pick them up.
“I can’t trust you,” she said.
“Syra, please,” he whispered, refusing to meet her gaze.
“Leave.” Her voice broke. “Leave. I’ll deal with the leshy and your father myself. Go … do whatever it is you actually do when you aren’t lying. Because I never want to see you again.”