Irina’s POV

Roman’s words landed on me like a fist.

*I will find them. And I will make sure they spend every day wishing they’d never been born.*

He hadn’t been looking at me when he said it. His eyes were on Nicholas — on the rise and fall of that too-shallow chest, on the bruised color of his lips, on all the things that were wrong and should not have been wrong. Roman’s jaw was tight. His voice had been quiet, the way a drawn wire is quiet right before it snaps.

He didn’t know.

He had no idea I was standing right there, one of the people he was promising to destroy.

I pressed my hands together in front of me and said nothing. My knuckles had gone white. I could feel my own pulse hammering against the inside of my wrists, too fast, too loud, like it was trying to knock its way out.

*They’ll find Sofia first.* The thought came in clean and cold, cutting through everything else. *They’ll find Sofia, and Sofia will crack. She’s brave, but she’s not made for interrogations — not Roman’s kind, not with the way he looks at people like he already knows every secret they’re hiding and he’s just waiting for them to admit it.*

And once Sofia cracked—

She’d tell them about Alexei. And about herself. And then someone would ask who else was involved, who else knew, and Sofia would try to protect me, but she was only human, she could only hold out so long, and then—

Then they’d ask about the poison.

And the powder that had gone on my neck.

And how many times Nicholas had kissed me there.

The air went out of the room. I don’t know if I’d actually stopped breathing or if it just felt that way, but for a second I was completely hollow — no air, no sound, just the image of Nicholas lying in that bed and the weight of what I’d done sitting on my chest like something I’d never be able to lift off.

My throat tightened so fast I couldn’t swallow.

The tears came whether I wanted them to or not. I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth and turned my face slightly away from the bed, away from Nicholas’s still form, because I couldn’t look at him right now and keep standing upright.

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

I startled hard, and then immediately felt ridiculous for it. Roman.

"Hey." His voice had changed. The blade-quiet was still there but something under it was different — worn down, almost. "Don’t. He’s going to be fine."

I couldn’t speak.

"Nicholas is — " Roman stopped. Exhaled through his nose. Tried again. "He doesn’t die easy. Trust me. I’ve watched him take things that should have killed him three times over." He paused. "He’ll come back from this."

It was the most gently he’d ever spoken to me.

Of all the things that could have destroyed me right now, somehow that was almost the worst of it. Roman, who had never once looked at me without suspicion in his eyes. Roman, who had wanted Nicholas to reject me from the beginning. Standing here, putting his hand on my shoulder and talking to me like I was a person who deserved to be comforted.

If he knew—

If he knew what I’d done—

He wouldn’t be standing here. He wouldn’t be saying *he’ll come back from this* in that carefully steady voice. He’d be looking at me the way I deserved to be looked at, the way people had been looking at me my whole life: like something disposable, like a mistake that needed to be corrected.

A sound crawled out of my throat. Not words. Not quite a sob. Something worse, something that had no name, small and wet and terrible.

"Hey." Roman’s hand tightened slightly on my shoulder. Awkward. Like he wasn’t entirely sure how to do this. "I said don’t. He’s going to be fine, and we’re going to find whoever did this, and it’s going to be *dealt with*." A beat. "You just — stay with him. Okay? Don’t leave him alone."

I nodded. It was all I could manage.

And then the door burst open.

Andrei came through it at something close to a run, breathless, his hair out of place, his face stripped of every trace of its usual easy warmth. He pulled up short when he saw Roman — and then me — and for one fraction of a second his eyes moved between us like he was trying to figure out how to say what he had to say.

"What?" Roman’s voice cut across the room. Sharp. Alert. "What happened?"

Andrei pressed a hand to his chest, catching his breath. His eyes went to the bed — to Nicholas — just for a moment. Then back to Roman.

"Something’s — " He stopped. Started again. Louder, and with an edge I’d never heard from him before. "It’s bad. It just started and it’s already — "

"*Andrei.*"

Andrei looked at him.

"Soldiers," he said. "It’s the soldiers."

Roman went very still.

"There’s a riot." Andrei’s voice cut through the silence like something thrown hard against a wall. "The barracks — they know Nicholas is down, someone must have told them, and now they’re — Roman, it’s already spreading, you have to come *now* —"

The room seemed to shrink.