Page 163 of Reign
My hand moves toward it without permission, and my fingers close around it.
I don’t put it on. It doesn’t fit my finger because I had it made for Vincenzo, measured for the hand he held out to me in his bed while crying like he couldn’t believe forever had survived long enough to be offered.
Sometimes I thread it onto a chain and wear it beneath my shirt. Sometimes I keep it in my fist until the edges bite into my palm. Today it lies on the desk because I’ve been pretending I’m working, and men pretending to work don’t sit there with dead husbands’ rings pressed to their mouths.
For the last month, I have been dead inside, but not inactive. That distinction matters to men who need orders from me. Dead men can still sign documents. Dead men can still have others killed. Dead men can still maintain empires if habit is strong enough.
I have done the work because the work came to me, and because the machine does not stop simply because its master has no heart left. I have watched men kneel. I have watched them bleed. I have listened to them swear they didn’t know, swear they only followed orders.
Now, looking at the dim laptop and the ring, I realize something with a clarity so calm it almost feels holy.
I am finished.
Not with revenge. No. The people involved will die. I will put them into the ground so thoroughly that history will forget their names. But I am finished pretending that sitting in this chair matters more than the only place left in the world where Vincenzo still feels possible.
I open the laptop properly.
The screen brightens, and my face appears ghosted over the files for one second before the document resolves. I move with the same flat efficiency that has carried me through the last month.
Password. Encrypted folder. Succession directives. Emergency transfer protocols. Authority structures. Papers I drafted years ago, because powerful men who do not prepare for their own death deserve the chaos that follows.
When I’m done, I send three messages—Kai, Maksim, and Tatiana. Then one to Arseniy.
Me: Meeting. Main hall. Ten minutes. Everyone.
No explanation. They’ll come faster because of that. I stand and put Vincenzo’s ring in my pocket, close to my body, where it belongs.
I look around the office once and feel nothing. Then I leave.
The main hall of Saint Helena fills within eight minutes.
That, at least, still works.
The old monastery was built for worship once, then for war, then for whatever we turned it into after we bought the bones and renamed the blood beneath them.
The main hall still has the height of a chapel, vaulted ceilings, stone pillars, and tall windows black with night. Men and women gather in clusters beneath them—soldiers, lieutenants, captains, my inner structure pulled from whatever tasks they were handling because when the Pakhan calls everyone, no one asks whether they’re busy.
Tatiana arrives first among the family, blue eyes sharp and suspicious. She takes one look at my face and stops smiling before she starts. Kai comes in next, tablet already in hand, because he is incapable of approaching disaster without documentation. Maksim follows, gaze sweeping the room, then landing on me with a small frown he doesn’t bother hiding.
Arseniy comes last.
He steps through the far doors in a dark coat, hair tied back, jaw set like he already knows he isn’t going to enjoy this. He looks from the gathered men to me, then to Kai, then back again. The bruises from our fight weeks ago are long gone, but something of that night still sits between us. Wrongness. Truth. The old family motto, like a blade, lay on a table.
Duty is not a choice.
Tonight, for once, it is.
I stand at the front of the hall with the printed documents in one hand. The room goes quiet without my asking. That used to satisfy something in me, now it only feels like weather.
Kai steps closer. “Nikolaj, what is this?”
“You’ll hear it with everyone else,” I say.
His eyes narrow. He does not like that. Good. I don’t need him to like it.
Tatiana comes up on my other side. “Who died?” she asks, then her face changes immediately because the answer is alreadyin the room, and she wishes she could take the words back. She swallows hard and winces.
Arseniy remains ten feet away, watching me like a man looking at a bridge and realizing too late that it has already been set on fire.
