Kolya moves swiftly towards me and crouches down beside me. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Then why were you lurking in the shadows like a boogeyman?!”

He smiles sadly. “You were dancing. I didn’t want to interrupt.” He doesn’t offer me a hand. Instead, he sits down on the floor opposite me, so that we’re facing each other. “You can hardly blame me.”

“Watch me try.”

“Plus, if I remember correctly, you spied on me once while I was playing the piano.”

“Alright, fine. I guess that’s fair.” I pull my knees up to my chest and shudder. “You should play more.”

“You should dance more.”

I sigh. “It hurts too much when I dance,” I admit. “I didn’t mean physically. Well, I mean, yeah, physically, too, but also—”

“I know what you meant.”

It’s eerily silent in here. The wind is muted by the thick stone walls, reduced to a wild, distant groan. “Did you follow me here or were you in the ballroom already when I arrived?”

“I was here already,” Kolya replies. “Why?”

I shrug. “Just… thought I was being followed there for a second. It was probably just the wind.”

He chuckles. “The ghost story got to you, it seems.”

“It did not!” I protest, a little too insistently. Then I smile at myself. “It’s easier to believe in ghosts at night when you’re alone and it’s storming.”

“You don’t have to be alone if you don’t want to, June. You don’t ever have to be alone if you don’t want to.”

I look down to hide the fact that I’m blushing. I hate that it’s so easy for him to get in my head. The worst part is that I don’t even think he’s trying.

Hadn’t I just been through this in my head? I don’t want this life. And even if I did, I have a child to think of. I have to protect this baby where I’d failed to protect the first.

I glance around at the mirrors. Each one reflects Kolya and me at different angles. In many of them, we look like we’re entwined together.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about your mother,” I admit when I turn my gaze back to me.

“You and me both.”

“My mom was around, but she was never very present,” I whisper. “Sometimes, it felt like Geneva and I were just afterthoughts. Boxes she was ticking off. I know it can’t have been easy for you, but at least you know your mother loved you.”

He tilts his head to the side to regard me from a new perspective. “That’s true,” he says softly. “But I think I’d prefer if she were happy.”

I feel something twist inside me. Raw emotion that rises to the surface and brings tears to my eyes. I haven’t ever heard a statement as nakedly selfless as that. I didn’t know he was capable of it.

Maybe that’s why I lean in and kiss him—because I can’t find the words to express to him how much I think of him in this moment.