Irina’s POV

Same cold stone. Same iron smell. Same sound of my own footsteps going too loud in the narrow stairwell. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

I’d taken the same route down. Past the laundry level. Through the door that needed the specific handle pull. Down into the part of the building where the cleaning staff didn’t bother.

Yesterday I’d come for Maxim.

Today I’d come for my father.

Those were different things. I hadn’t worked out exactly how different until I was already moving, the letter folded against my ribs, my jaw set. Yesterday there had been something hot underneath it. A specific, directed kind of anger that had been sitting in my chest for a year waiting to have somewhere to go.

This was colder.

---

The guard outside Mikhail’s cell was different from yesterday’s guard. Younger. He looked at my face, then at the cloak, then at the corridor behind me like he was checking whether I’d been followed by someone with actual authority.

I held his gaze.

He stepped aside.

---

He was sitting in the corner.

That was the first thing. Not standing—not pacing, not gripping the bars, not doing any of the things I’d half-expected from a man who’d spent his whole life in a room where people deferred to him. He was sitting on the ground, back against the wall, knees drawn up.

He looked smaller.

That was the word. Smaller. Like something that had been inflated by status and circumstance for so long that when you took those things away, there wasn’t as much left as you’d thought.

He looked up when the door opened.

His face went through three things in quick succession. Surprise. Relief. Then something else—something that tried to arrange itself into dignity and couldn’t quite get there.

"Irina." His voice was rough. Dry. Like he hadn’t talked to anyone since they’d put him in here. "You came."

I stood in the doorway.

I didn’t answer.

"I thought—" He pushed himself up. Slowly. His knees were bothering him—I could see it, the way he moved. "I thought they weren’t going to let me see anyone."

"They didn’t let you," I said. "I came on my own."

He nodded. Like that was what he’d expected. Like he was already adjusting the story.

"Irina, listen—"

"Not yet." I stepped inside. Let the door swing behind me. "I’ll tell you when."

His mouth closed.

That surprised me. He’d always had more to say. In every room, in every conversation, Mikhail had always had more to say. The beta of Iron Thorn didn’t go quiet for anyone—not even Stepan, half the time.

He went quiet now.

I looked at him. At the cell. At the specific smallness of a powerful man in a space that didn’t care who he’d been.

"You look terrible," I said.

"I’ve been in a cell for four days."

"I know."

He waited.

"How’s Maxim?" he said. Carefully.

"Bruised." I crossed my arms. "From what I could see."

"You saw him."

"Yesterday."

His expression shifted. Trying to calculate something—what I’d said, what Maxim had said, whether the stories matched up.

"Whatever he told you—"

"He didn’t tell me anything useful." I looked at the wall. "He told me I was nothing. He told me Nicolas was going to get bored with me. He told me Katerina left because she couldn’t stand to watch me anymore." I looked back at my father. "The usual."

Mikhail’s face went through something uncomfortable.

"That’s not—Irina, you have to understand. What happened between you and Maxim, that was never—I never meant for it to—"

"I know what you meant," I said.

"No, you don’t. You think I wanted—" He took a step toward the bars. "You think I watched that happen and felt nothing? You’re my daughter. You’re my blood. I didn’t—it was complicated. The pack politics, Stepan’s position, what Maxim was going to be—there were things at stake that were bigger than—"

"Bigger than me."

He stopped.

"That’s what you mean," I said. "Say it."

His mouth worked.

"Say it," I said again. Quiet. Not angry. Just—waiting.

"It wasn’t like that," he said finally.

"No," I said. "I know. It was never like that. It was always *complicated.* It was always *bigger than you can understand.* It was always something I was supposed to accept because the alternative was—what? Inconveniencing you?"

He opened his mouth.

I reached into my jacket.

"You want to tell me what you think happened with Katerina?" I said.

He looked up. Something wary moved across his face.

"She’s gone," I said. "Left when the gates were busy. She and her mate." I watched his expression. "I helped Roman find her, actually. She’s at the northern coast. Set it up before she even came to see me in the garden."

His face was doing something complicated.

"She planned it," I said. "She planned all of it. The garden, the vial, the—" I stopped. Pulled the envelope out. "She planned this too. Left it in her room."

He stared at the envelope. At my name in Katerina’s handwriting.

"She also left something for you," I said.

I took the four pages out. Found the two that were his—she’d separated them, folded differently, a small K marked in the corner. I hadn’t read those ones. I hadn’t needed to.

I pushed them through the bars.

He took them.

Slowly. Like they might burn.

I watched him unfold them. Watched his eyes move across the first line. Watched his face go still.

He read.

I didn’t say anything. Let him read. Let the silence do what it needed to do.

It took a while.

When he finished, he stood there with the pages in his hands and his eyes somewhere on the middle distance and the specific look of a man who had just had something he’d been telling himself for a long time taken completely apart.

"She says..." He stopped. His voice had gone strange. Rough in a different way than before. "She says she left of her own choice."

"Yes."

"She says—" He looked down at the pages. Read it again, like he needed to check. "*I am leaving voluntarily. I have wanted to leave for longer than I am willing to admit. The decision is mine and I will not allow anyone to say otherwise.*" His voice had dropped to almost nothing. He was almost reading to himself. Just letting the words come out. "*I will not live under the same roof as anyone who has allowed what I have allowed. I have made my choices and I will answer for them. But I am done pretending that anyone else’s choices were made for them.*"

He lowered the pages.

Looked at me.

He’d aged. I hadn’t noticed it until this moment—hadn’t let myself look closely enough. But he’d aged. The last four days, or the last year, or the last decade, something had been eating at him and he hadn’t let it show until now, in a cell, with his daughter watching.

"Irina," he said.

"Don’t," I said.

"Just listen—"

"I heard you," I said. "I heard everything you were going to say before you said it. And I’m telling you—don’t."

His throat moved.

"I came down here," I said. "I came down here and I want you to hear this. So listen."

He went still.

"I know you think that what happened to me was—complicated. Political. Bigger than you could help. I know you told yourself I was adjusting. I know you had things to protect." I kept my voice steady. "And maybe all of that is true. Maybe every word of it is true. I’m not going to stand here and call you a liar to your face."

He was watching me.

"But I was in that house for a year," I said. "I was there every single day. And every single day I was—" I stopped. Let myself look at it for exactly one second. All of it. The pack house floor. The bruises that didn’t heal. The way I’d learned to make myself invisible and how that still hadn’t been enough. "I was there. And you weren’t."

His eyes were wet.

I looked at that.

Let myself look at it.

Then looked away.

"I’m not here to forgive you," I said. "That’s not what this is. I didn’t come down here because I wanted to fix anything or—get something back. There’s nothing to get back." I looked at the bars between us. "I came because I wanted you to know that I didn’t do any of it. Whatever they told you. Whatever Maxim said, whatever story he built—I didn’t do any of it. I never did anything to deserve what happened in that house. I was your daughter and I deserved better than what I got."

Mikhail pressed his hand over his mouth.

"I deserved better," I said again. "And I know that now. And I needed you to hear me say it."

He made a sound behind his hand. Something broken and shapeless.

I watched him.

"Nicolas is going to decide what happens to you," I said. "That’s not my decision. I’m not going to ask him for anything on your behalf. I’m not going to argue for you or against you." I picked up the envelope off the ground where he’d let it fall and set it on the small ledge inside the bars. "That’s done. It’s his call."

He lowered his hand. His face was a wreck.

"Irina—" His voice cracked. "You’re my daughter. Whatever I did, whatever I failed to—you’re my *daughter—*"

"I was." I met his eyes. "And you made a choice about what that meant."

He started to say something.

"Don’t tell me we still have family between us," I said. "Don’t say that word to me. You looked me in the eye in that corridor and you said nothing. You signed the papers when they stripped my rank. You chose, every single day, to believe whatever was easier than the truth."

I took a breath.

"You had me removed from the pack," I said. "That was you. Your signature. Whatever Maxim pressured you into—you’re the one who signed it. I don’t have family in Iron Thorn anymore. You made sure of that."