Valentina looked up into his eyes, her heart clenching at the raw pain she saw. She’d seen that same hurt in her own reflection for years after Sergei had left, and she wouldn’t allow him to suffer the same way. “I promise. I will not leave you, Kolya.”
“Thank you,” he whispered and bent down to press a kiss to her forehead before leaving the room.
Valentina leaned back against the bench seat inside the caravan. It wasn’t her preferred way to travel, but their group was too large to use faster modes of transport. In addition to Sergei, Nikolai, Yuri, and Lars, they’d brought five additional guards with them to the towers. They’d gone back and forth about which five were best suited, and Lars had offered to have each of them submit to the tower’s version of a lie-detector test upon arriva
