Page 165 of Reign
He recoils slightly, which is satisfying for half a second and then not at all. “That is not what that means,” he says.
“It means whatever the men in charge decide it means. That was the point, wasn’t it?”
His face darkens. “Do not use that on me.”
“I’m not using anything,” I say. “I’m giving you what should have been yours if our families didn’t turn the eldest into the family’s blade so the youngest could become the crown.”
Arseniy’s mouth tightens. “And you think this fixes that?”
“No.”
“Then what does it fix?”
I look around the hall.
At Tatiana, furious and hurt. At Kai, calculating too fast because he thinks if he finds the right argument, he can still stop this. At Maksim, pale under his tan for once, jaw tight. At the men and women waiting to see whether their world is changing or ending.
Then I look back at Arseniy. “It removes me before I hollow the whole thing out, trying to keep myself standing.”
No one speaks because they know what I mean. My grief will destroy the family if I keep being its head.
“Nikolaj,” Arseniy says carefully, “this is not something you decide in the middle of grief.”
I laugh once, and the sound is dead enough to make several men look away. “Careful, brother. You abandoned your position because of grief. Don’t lecture me on timing.”
His face tightens as if I hit him. “This is different,” Arseniy says.
“Yes, it is. I’m leaving the structure intact behind me.” I continue, because they need to hear it and because saying it once means I don’t have to spend the next year letting them watch me become a corpse in a chair.
“I don’t care anymore. Not enough. Not the way this needs. I can still kill. I can still punish. I can still make men afraid, but that is not leadership; that is appetite with a title. If I stay, this family becomes nothing but the shape of my grief. Every decision will be blood first and structure second. Every enemywill become him in my head. Every slight will be a grave I dig too deep because I need somewhere to put this.”
Tatiana is crying now and pretending she isn’t. “Then let us help you,” she says.
I look at her, and this time it hurts. “You can’t,” I say.
Her face crumples, and I nearly break with it.
“I love you,” I tell her, because if I’m leaving tonight, she deserves to hear it without having to dig through my brutality for proof. “You are the best of us in every way that still frightens me. But you can’t help me stay where everything sounds like his last breath.”
She presses both hands to her mouth.
Kai’s expression has gone still in the way it does when emotion reaches him too directly to be useful. “Where are you going?” he asks.
“Isle Lucia,” I whisper, so only they can hear me. “I’m leaving tonight, and I’m not coming back.”
Kai steps toward me. “Do not say that like it’s decided.”
“It is.”
“You’re still being hunted. Reyes still has loyalists, and Byrne’s people are unstable. If you disappear now—”
“Then Arseniy handles it.”
Kai’s face hardens. “And if they come for you there?”
I smile faintly. “Then they’re welcome to try.”
“That is not funny, Nikolaj!” Kai exclaims.
