“Inside, I’m angry,” I said.
“And out here?”
“Out here I’m just tired.”
He studied me, then sat on the edge of the fountain across from me.
We were silent for a long time.
It was not the silence of enemies.
That was the problem.
Finally I asked, “Do you ever use this place?”
“This garden?”
“Yes.”
“Not often.”
“Waste of a perfectly good refuge.”
His head turned slightly. “You call it a refuge?”
“I call anything that lets me breathe a refuge.”
He looked at the water for a moment. “Fair.”
That was the whole conversation.
It should have meant nothing.
It meant everything.
Part 2
If you spend long enough in captivity without being broken, something strange begins to happen.
You stop measuring the place only by its locks.
You start measuring it by its rhythms.
The sound of footsteps on the stairs. The hour Cora brought tea. The exact angle of light on the east wall of the library at four in the afternoon. Nico’s laugh from the kitchen. The way Roman’s presence changed the air even before he spoke.
By the second week, I hated that I knew those things.
By the third, I hated that they comforted me.
My father finally got one phone call.
They gave it to me in a study with dark paneling and a window that didn’t open. Roman sat three yards away, saying nothing, reading something that I knew he wasn’t actually reading.
“Sky?” my father’s voice cracked on the first syllable. “Sky, sweetheart—”
“I’m okay.” I made my tone firmer than I felt. “Fix this.”
“I’m trying.”
“How long?”
Silence.
That was all I needed.
“Dad.”
“I’m trying,” he said again, and this time it sounded like confession instead of promise.
I closed my eyes.
When the call ended, I handed the phone back and went straight to the garden because it was the only place in that house where I could afford to feel exactly how frightened I was.
I sat by the fountain until sunset.
Roman found me there.
He did not ask if I was all right.
Good. I would have hated him for it.
Instead he stood beside the rose bushes and said, “Your father is moving assets.”
“Not fast enough.”
“No.”
I looked up at him. “Do you enjoy this?”
