Page 167 of Reign
I chuckle bitterly. “No.”
“You can’t just go alone,” she says, her voice rising just shy of hysterical.
“I can.”
“You shouldn’t,” Tatiana says, and the child in her voice destroys me more than the assassin ever could.
I cross to her before I can think better of it. The room watches me move. She doesn’t step back, though she looks like she wants to hit me. I stop in front of her and place one hand against the side of her face.
She breaks instantly. “Kolya,” she whispers.
“I need you to stay alive,” I tell her.
Her tears spill over. “That’s my line.”
“I’m stealing it.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Yes.”
“You’re mybrother,” she weeps.
I swallow once. “Yes.”
She grabs me hard, arms around my middle, face pressed into my chest like she’s little again and the world is too large. I hold her with one arm, the other hand at the back of her head. The hall disappears for a moment. Just her—my little sister. My blood. One of the last living things capable of reaching whatever is left of me without asking permission first.
“I’ll visit,” she says into my shirt, and it is not a question.
“Fine,” I say.
“Soon.”
I almost smile. “Bossy.”
“You raised me.”
“That was clearly a mistake.”
She laughs once, wet and furious, and then pulls back before she can fall apart even more. She wipes her face with the back of her hand and steps away like she’s stepping off a cliff.
Kai is next. He doesn’t hug me. Thank God. He stands in front of me with every piece of emotion locked so tightly behind his eyes that it almost works. “I’ll stabilize the transition,” he says. “Then I’m coming.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes,” Kai says calmly. “I am.”
I look at him. “This is why people find you irritating.”
“Thisis why you’re alive.”
Fair.
I don’t fight him further because I don’t have enough left to fight people who love me by being inconvenient. “Later,” I say.
Kai nods once. “Later.”
Maksim steps forward and looks at me like he might make a joke, then doesn’t. That almost gets me. He claps one hand on my shoulder, hard enough to hurt, and says, “Don’t let the island make you soft.”
