Rough Exile

Chapter Seven

TheknockatYana’s door surprised me. We’d already eaten, and usually the two of them took off for the evening. Now that I knew what was going on between them, I assumed they were usually together.

I tightened the tie on Yana’s fuzzy white robe and answered. It had to be Ilya because I highly doubted Bron would be polite enough to knock.

When I opened the door, Ilya was standing there, looking uncomfortable. “Hello.”

“Hi.”

“May I come in?”

I stepped back to admit him, and he moved into the room. His jeans and T-shirt were clean, as though he’d just put them on, and his hair was damp.

“If you’re looking for some fun, Bron has expressly forbidden us from fooling around when he’s not with us.”

“That’s not why I’m here,” he said, his cheeks reddening. It was so odd to see a guy who looked like a lumberjack blushing.

“Oh.”

“He told you that?” He was clearly trying to hide his eagerness. God, he was so in love with Bron, and Bron so didn’t deserve it.

“Yes, yesterday, when he…took over.”

“I missed that part.”

I nodded.

“Did he force you?”

I shrugged. “I came here knowing it was part of the deal.”

He wandered closer to the dresser and stroked a glass pony on a dusty doily in front of the mirror. I’d been working on cleaning the room, but the bookshelves had been my priority, along with vacuuming the wall-to-wall carpeting, and washing the bedding, towels, and clothes to get the dust off them. The laundry room was in the basement, so it took forever to carry things down there and back up again.

”Is there anything you need? I know you’ve been wearing Yana’s things—I should take you shopping on the mainland.”

There was nothing wrong with Yana’s clothing, considering most of them were neutral classics, but having something new might be nice. Underwear was definitely on my wish list.

“I don’t need much, but some underwear and bras would be nice.”

His gaze drifted from my face to my chest, then he glanced away, as though he were being rude. The robe I had on was thick enough that unless he got excited by a bare neck or ankles, or had x-ray vision, he wasn’t going to get much of a thrill from checking me out. Most of Yana’s clothing was downright prudish.

“I didn’t even think of that. I’m sure you don’t want to borrow those.”

“Yeah, it’s a little too weird, even for me.”

He sifted through a heart-shaped bowl of trinkets and took out a ring. He slid it onto his little finger, but it wouldn’t go past the first knuckle. He turned it around and around with his thumb, looking lost in thought. Eventually, he took off the ring and put it back.

“Do you come up here a lot?” I asked.

“Before, yes. Not often since she’s been gone.”

“Where did she go?”

He shrugged his thick shoulders, his face somber. “There are rumors.”

“Rumors?”

“That she was taken by one of my father’s enemies. That she’s captive, or maybe married to one of them.”

“Like…against-her-will married?”

“Maybe she was in love. If she was, she didn’t tell me. One morning, she was gone. The cook and nanny did not see her leave. I was eight. She was twenty-two.”

“Were the two of you close?”

”As close as a child can be to an adult sibling. She was the daughter of my father’s first wife. She was…imperfect. Father kept her here.”

“Imperfect?”

“That is how father tells it, but she was perfect to me. I think maybe she preferred women, or maybe she didn’t like men who were cruel.”

I shuddered at the idea of poor Yana being forced to marry someone.

“Maybe she ran away, but I don’t know how she would have reached the mainland without help. None of the boats were missing.”

His concern for her even now was moving.

“You miss her.” I wasn’t sure what else to say.

“She was the last sibling here with me, and my favorite.”

“How many siblings do you have?”

“Nine, last count.”

“Wow. That must have been fun growing up.”

“I’m the only child of my father’s third wife. I was much younger, and…not popular with the others.”

Did my twin sisters feel the same way? Bianca and Brody had been hell on wheels, but I hoped they’d never felt like the rest of us disliked them.

“And here I thought I came from a big family.”