Page 104 of Reign
“What?” I ask.
Arseniy shifts back just enough that I can breathe fully, though he doesn’t release my wrist. Not yet. Maybe not because he thinks I’ll swing. Maybe because some part of him still needs the contact to keep this from turning into smoke.
“What the fuck is it, Arseniy?” I say again, and this time there’s no bite in it at all. Just the question.
His jaw works once. “That I was wrong.”
Arseniy Dragovich is not a man who says that lightly. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him say it at all. He holds my gaze and continues, each word forced like it has to be dragged up through years of old damage to get out. “About him. About you. About all of it.”
I don’t know whether I want to hit him again or hold him there until he says everything.
Maybe both.
“What changed?” I ask.
His mouth twists in something close to self-disgust. “Five years.”
The answer hits harder than it should because I know exactly what he means. Five years of exile. Five years of grief. Five years of standing outside the family and carrying the weight of what I did to him with no structure left to hide behind. Five years of understanding what love costs when someone carves it out of you and tells you survival was the point.
My throat tightens when he finally lets go of my wrist and sits back on his heels, still over me but no longer pinning me with full force. I don’t sit up right away, I just lie there on the mat, both of us breathing hard, both of us bloodied, the broken bag on the floor nearby.
He looks older from this angle, tired in the bones. For the first time since he walked in, I see not just the brother who left, the enforcer who failed to reprogram me, or the man I made my enemy by doing what I thought had to be done. I see the other thing too—the cost.
I drag one forearm over my eyes for a second and let out a breath. “You picked a shit way to start this conversation.”
Arseniy almost smiles. It’s ugly and brief and gone too fast to be called gentleness. “You were already hitting things.”
I tilt my head. “Fair.”
He stands first and offers me nothing. Also fair. I sit up slowly, every muscle in me objecting, and look at him through the blur of pain and old loyalty and the beginnings of something even more dangerous than reconciliation.
Truth.
Whatever he came here to say, it’s bigger than the fight. Bigger, maybe, than the last five years between us.
I spit blood onto the mat, wipe my mouth, and brace my forearms on my knees. “All right,” I say. “Then start talking.”
twenty-eight
Nikolaj
Arseniymovestothebench by the far wall and sits, elbows on his knees, one hand hanging loose between them, blood at the corner of his mouth where I split it.
The overhead lights are too harsh for this kind of conversation. They flatten everything, make the bruises look uglier, the shadows under his eyes deeper, the years on his face harder to ignore. I stay where I am on the mat for a moment longer, breath finally slowing, every muscle in me pulsing with the aftermath of the fight.
Neither of us says anything.
I grab a towel, and sit on the edge of the mat with my forearms braced on my thighs, facing him from a few feet away. Arseniy looks only slightly better, which annoys me because I hit him hard enough that he should look worse.
“All right,” I say again, rougher now. “Talk.”
His gaze flicks up to mine, then away, then back. “I didn’t come here to ask for forgiveness.”
“That’s good,” I say. “Because I’m fresh out.”
His mouth twitches once, humorless. “I wasn’t expecting any.”
“Then why are you here?”
