Promised To The Devil On Ice

Chapter Three

Nikolai

"I can't do this."

She says it like the words are physically hurting her on the way out, like she can't get them clear of her teeth fast enough.

"I just started college. I'm twenty-one. I lost my best friend three months ago and I haven't even...I haven't even finished grieving him, and you want me to what, plan a wedding? Pick flowers? Smile in photos with..." She gestures at me without looking at me, like I'm a piece of furniture she's annoyed by. "...him, like everything's fine? Like my life didn't just get handed to me without my signature on it?"

I've known Elowen Bellrose since we were both too young to remember meeting. Christmas parties, summer boats, a hundred dinners exactly like this one. She has always managed to get under my skin faster than anyone else alive, and watching her unravel across this table, hands shaking, voice cracking every few words, I find myself irritated in a way I don't entirely like.

It shouldn't offend me. Her disagreeing. I don't want this either, not the way my father wants it...as a merger, a headline, another brick in the thing he's building. And yet something in me still bristles every time she says him like I'm a stranger, like four Christmases and a hundred dinners were nothing.

"Elowen," her mother says quietly, pleading.

"No. I want them to hear this." She looks at my father, then at my mother, who hasn't said a word, just watches with the same stillness she's spent thirty years perfecting. "I want everyone in this room to hear that I did not agree to this. Nobody asked me."

"Nobody needed to ask you," my father says, not unkindly, which will land worse than if he'd been cruel. "That's not how this works."

"Then how does it work? Explain it to me. Really. I'd love to understand how two twenty-one-year-olds get engaged over tea because our parents decided it in a room we weren't in."

I don't say anything. I watch her the way I watch everyone, cataloguing every crack in the performance, every place where emotion gets the better of calculation. She's better at hers than she knows.

"There's a precedent," my father says. "Our families..."

"I don't care about precedent."

"You'll learn to."

"I won't." Her voice breaks, and I watch her hate that it happens in front of us. "I can't marry into a family that's..." She swallows hard. "That's connected to the person my best friend was investigating before he died."

The room goes very still.

My father's expression changes first. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

Her mother's hand closes around her wrist. "That's enough."

"It's not enough, it's barely anything, it's..."

"You're accusing my son," my father says, his voice dropping several degrees, "of involvement in a boy's death. In my house. At your family's table. On the same day you buried him."

"I'm not accusing anyone of anything. I'm saying I have questions nobody wants to answer."

"That's enough, Elowen."

"Is it a coincidence?" She's not looking at my father anymore. She's looking at me, dead on, daring me to flinch. "That the boy who used to be your best friend ends up dead, and three months later I'm suddenly engaged to you?"

Something moves behind my face and I don't let it surface. Not guilt. I've stopped calling it that a long time ago. Something colder...the knowledge that she's standing beside a truth she can't see yet.

My father stands so fast his chair nearly tips. "How dare..."

"Father."

One word. Quiet. The whole room stops.

I stand slowly, button my jacket, and I'm aware, as I'm always aware, that I probably look exactly like him in this moment. I hate that a little. I do it anyway because it's useful.

"I'd like to speak to my fiancée alone."

"Nikolai..."

"Alone."

Softer this time. It works better than volume ever does.

He wants to argue. He doesn't. Rosa looks at her daughter with something between apology and warning, and then they're all filing out, the door clicking shut behind them until it's just Elowen and me and the good china nobody drank from.

"That," I say, "was reckless."

"It was true."

"That doesn't make it smart." I walk toward the window, hands in my pockets, because if I don't give them something to do, I might start doing something else. "You just accused a man of orchestrating his own son's murder in front of his wife, your mother, and everyone at a dinner about your engagement."

"I didn't accuse him. I asked a question."

"You know exactly what you did."

"Do you have proof I'm wrong?"

I turn and look at her, letting the silence do some of the work my voice doesn't need to. "Do you have proof you're right?"

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting."

"You always do that." She folds her arms, and I can see her holding herself together by sheer will, refusing to let me watch her shake. "Every single question. You throw it back like a mirror. What do you think? Do you believe that? Do you have proof? You never actually say anything."

"Maybe there's nothing to say."

"Or maybe there's everything to say and you just won't."

I let that sit. She's not wrong, which is exactly the problem.

"You and Ivo were close," I say. Not a question.

"You know we were. You were there for half of it."

"I was." Something moves through me that I don't examine too closely. "We all were. Once."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

I look away first, which I never do, and I know she'll notice.

"You two used to be inseparable." She says it carefully, watching my face for the crack she already suspects is there. "And then you weren't. What happened?"

You want to know what happened. I could tell you exactly what happened. I could tell you the last conversation I ever had with him, word for word, the way it plays behind my eyes whether I want it to or not.

"People grow apart," I say instead.

"That's not an answer either."

"I'm aware." My jaw tightens before I can stop it. It's the first thing I've let slip all night that isn't calculated. "You want a villain, Elowen. Someone to blame so the last three months make sense. I understand that better than you think. I'm simply telling you it isn't going to be that easy."

"So there is something."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't deny it."

Smart girl. Always was. It's one of the things I've never let myself think too hard about, because thinking about it leads somewhere I don't have room for right now.

I cross the space between us slowly, unhurried. It's a language people understand without meaning to; it tells them you're not afraid, and fear is contagious, and I've spent my entire life making sure mine never shows. I stop close enough that she has to tilt her chin up to hold my eyes, and I let my voice drop into the register I know works, the one I've used a hundred times on a hundred people who needed calming or controlling, sometimes both.

"You should be careful about which questions you ask out loud."

Her eyes narrow. "Why?"

"Because I'm not the only one listening."

"Is that a threat?"

"It's a warning. There's a difference."

I lift my hand slowly, giving her every chance to pull away, and when she doesn't, I let the back of my knuckles brush her cheekbone. Light. Harmless-looking. The trick is to make it feel like comfort before the other person has time to decide whether they want it.

She goes still.

There it is.

People mistake gentleness for safety. I've learned not to correct them.

"I know I'm not who you wanted," I say, keeping my voice soft, "and I know you think I'm the villain in whatever story you're building in your head. But you're going to need someone in your corner before this is over. I'd rather it be me than whoever's actually watching you."

She pulls back.

"Don't touch me."

I drop my hand immediately, my expression unchanged. "Noted."

"You're good at that."

"At what?"

"The soft voice. The concerned look." Her eyes stay on mine. "I watched you do it to Ivo's father this morning, right before you said something that made him look like his whole world ended twice in one day."

Something in my chest goes very still.

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"Then tell me."

"Elowen..."

My phone rings.

I don't move for a second. Her eyes are still on mine, waiting, and some part of me is still deciding whether to finish the sentence I started, whether there's a version of tonight where I actually tell her something true.

Then I pull the phone from my pocket and answer without looking away from her.

"What."

The voice on the other end is low, clipped, careful in the specific way people get when they know exactly how bad news lands.

"You need to be here."

“What’s going…”

"Now, Nikolai!"