With the light of morning comes a renewed sense of hope. When I slip from my bed, the house is quiet, and my breakfast is waiting on the dressing table. Everything is as it should be. I’m confident that when I walk to the door and turn the knob, I will laugh at the absurdity of my dreams last night.
But the knob doesn’t move regardless of how I turn it because it wasn’t a dream and he’s locked me in here. My palms lock into fists at my sides, and I resist the urge to slam them against the door.
I have always been a prisoner, and in that regard, nothing has changed. But the cruelty lies in the small taste of freedom Nikolai granted me before he snatched it away. He thinks he can alter my strength of will by challenging me in this way, but he doesn’t know that I’ve already walked the streets of hell and dealt with devils worse than him.
His attempt to blame what happened on my father or Dante is weak and pathetic. He is a liar and a thief, and there is no honor in his word. I refuse to believe anything other than what’s obvious. As my mother always used to tell me, the simplest answer is usually the correct one.
The room isn’t ideal, but I can still make the situation work. I can continue to practice and work on strengthening my ankle. But now that I’m aware of Nikolai’s intentions, I must stay ahead of them.
I chop up my breakfast to dirty up the plate. It’s a trick I learned long ago, and it’s never failed me yet. When I’m done, I scrape all but a few small remnants into the toilet and flush with a resounding sense of victory. This has always been the one area of my life where I’ve had complete control, and I’m not about to let him change that.
With the ruse complete, I take to the floor for warm-ups before moving on to some makeshift barre exercises in the closet. For the entirety of the day, it’s rinse and repeat. Work and rest. Work and rest. When my body breaks down and can go no further, I take a small amount of nourishment to fill my tank. Sometimes, when I go too far, I purge it all back up with a healthy dose of self-hatred.
It’s a cycle I learned from watching my mother as a child. I once heard her mention that my father thought she was fat, and that was why he didn’t love her. In a drunken slurry of words, she uttered something I could never forget. You have to stay pretty, Tana. You must be pretty and thin, so love won’t evade you too. It scared me to witness her breakdowns, and I decided at a young age that she was probably right. The best ballerinas were thin and pretty, and I wanted to be loved just like them.
Some might say it’s not healthy, but until Nikolai, nobody has ever complained about my eating habits. He has falsely deluded himself into staking a claim over my body. The body I have worked so hard for. He can have my life. My freedom. Even my hours in the day. But he will never have my body.
As a testament to that, I’m prepared to continue my routine as best as I can within the confines of my room. I need to warm the muscles in my body before moving onto static stretches, all of which can be difficult with the brace. A few of my favorite dynamic movements are shoulder rolls and leg swings, now aided by the assistance of the dressing table. But before I can even begin, the lock disengages on the door.
Ice blue is the first thing I see, and subsequently feel when chills crawl over my body. My captor doesn’t need words when his energy is dark like this. It billows into the room like smoke and chokes the life out of everything inside.
Running is not an option, and I am not one to quickly forget difficult lessons learned. My first instinct is to curl into myself. But the wolf at my door doesn’t move. He doesn’t even appear to breathe. His legs are planted wide, his nostrils flared, and his eyes are so flinty I’m desperate for the sanctuary of my bed.
“Zvezda.” His irises track the lines of my body like a true hunter, indexing my weaknesses. “Your father took specific care to inform me that you were a good, obedient girl. He said you had been raised to do as you were told and would not be any trouble.”
I swallow, and the lie comes out with a choked quietness. “I am.”
Nikolai tilts his head to the side, his lips curling into a cruel smile. “Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Do good girls lie, Nakya?”
My heart thrashes against my ribs, and my stomach churns. I don’t know what he knows. He is toying with me, and the unpredictability scares me more than anything. In my own environment, I have come to know what to expect. But this is not my natural element, and I truly don’t know what this man is capable of.
“No.” The word is a whisper. A hope that the simple acknowledgment will make him disappear.
“No,” he agrees. “They do not.”
The space between us looms quietly. Nikolai is not in any hurry to break the silence and the long stretch of time only compounds my nerves.
“You seem intent on defying me,” he finally says. “And naturally, I am left to wonder why you are obedient to your father but not me. Do I look like the kind of man you want to trifle with?”
I shake my head.
“Use your words, princess.”
“No,” I say, too loudly.
And again, my instincts urge me to run. But Nikolai won’t allow it, and he makes it known when he stalks toward me. I screw my eyes shut because it’s always better not to see what’s coming. But the draft moves past me, and curiosity gets the best of me. When I open them again, he’s disappeared into my closet.
He’s touching all my things. I am left to bear witness as he jerks my ballet clothes from the racks and bundles them into his arms.
“Those are mine!” I move on autopilot, stealing what I can from the racks, tossing each piece into the corner and guarding them with my life.
Nikolai turns and sizes up my pathetic little pile to the one he has already claimed. “It appears I haven’t made myself clear, pet. So let me do so now. I own you, and I can do whatever I like.”
My head rattles, and I’m at a loss. It feels like he’s stealing my soul. I don’t know how to deal with this kind of insanity. “Please—”
“You have disobeyed me. Save your begging for someone who might listen. Right now, you are wasting your breath.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” I declare.
His eyes tell me otherwise. “You flushed your breakfast down the toilet, did you not?”
I flinch, and that’s when it occurs to me. He has cameras in my room. Possibly my bathroom. And he’s watching me. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.
The truth is too raw to accept. I don’t want to know what he’s seen. My private moments. My grueling workouts, followed by the horrific breakdowns. My obsession with food. These struggles are mine, and they are intimate.
“You are sick!” I yell. “How dare you watch me in my private moments? How dare you spy on me? You are filthy, and disgusting, and it’s no wonder you fill your life with meaningless encounters. Who could want you—”
My tirade is cut short when Nikolai tosses my clothes onto the floor and produces a flask from his jacket pocket. I watch noiselessly as he douses the pile of leotards and tights in fluid and strikes the wall with a match.
For a few stunned moments, I’m immobile, unable to fully comprehend the sight before me. He truly is a madman. He is without mercy, tossing the match onto the pile and igniting my life in flames. My thoughts are scattered and disconnected, and all reason has escaped me when I fling my body toward the flames in a desperate attempt to salvage what I can.
Nikolai intercepts, capturing me around the waist and pinning me against the wall. I claw at his hands and then, when that doesn’t work, his face. I’m not thinking about the consequences. I’m only thinking about the crime he has committed against me. His actions have inexplicably split me wide open, stirring to life the dormant rage that lives inside me.
When I draw blood, I’m quick to discover that I have the capability of stirring Nikolai’s rage too. All men want to be powerful, and my captor exerts his by collaring me around the throat with the meaty flesh of his palm. His methods are brutal and effective. I fall limp in his arms, waving the metaphorical white flag. He’s made his point, and I have learned my lesson. But he isn’t done. He isn’t even reachable right now. His dead eyes are looking right through me. My hands move to his, feebly attempting to remove the block against my airway.
It occurs to me that I should beg. I should plead. Keep fighting. But between those thoughts, there are other, darker thoughts. What is there to fight for? My ankle is ruined. My losses and agonies have been greater than any contentment I’ve ever known. I would be a fool to withhold hope that I can control my destiny. I am bone-tired of facing each new day and the challenges it brings. And when blackness creeps into the edges of my vision, the decision is made for me. My body doesn’t have the strength to fight, even if I wanted to. All that I’m capable of now is watching the dying embers fade from the monster’s eyes before me.
Fragments of reality pull me back into the world at a sluggish pace, stealing any hope I held for a peaceful death. My mouth is dry as cotton, and my head is thick with fog. Light flickers in and out of my vision, and when I see the blue of my monster, acidic tears burn the back of my eyelids. How could I ever believe in heaven when I am stuck in hell with him?
I’m uncertain how much time has passed since everything grew dim, but Nikolai is still here. Only this time, he is beside my bed, wearing a tortured expression on his face.
“Zvezda, I—”
What sounds vaguely like the makings of an apology tapers off to nothing. Just as I suspected, he is a coward. I don’t want his wasted words. I want nothing further to do with him, and I find a bitter satisfaction in the claw marks left on his brutishly striking face.
I meet his gaze and hold it. “You may burn my clothes, Mr. Kozlov, and I will still dance naked. You may beat me or touch me in ways you have no right, and still, you won’t break me. I’m telling you this now, so if it is your intent, then go on and do your worst to me.”
Nikolai shows no visible reaction to my statement, and if he weren’t looking directly at my face, I might not even be certain he heard me. I wish he would just leave so I could get back to my work. But he doesn’t. He lingers wordlessly, his eyes moving over my tender throat with painstaking precision.
It’s only when I attempt to sit up that the muddled situation becomes clear. He has no need to argue. When I struggle with the imprisonments on my limbs, I feel as though I’m being strangled all over again. He has bound me from moving at all. I jerk against the restraints in vain, and Nikolai flinches.
“You can’t do this!”
But he can, and he has. He won’t look at me. Why won’t he look at me anymore?
He issues a subdued request in Russian, and a woman in a white lab coat wheels in an IV stand.
“What are you doing?” I thrash against the restraints. “You can’t do this!”
Nikolai speaks to the woman in Russian, and it doesn’t take me long to understand that she is a Vory doctor. He issues his orders, and she obeys.
When her eyes fall on me, I shake my head and plead for any scrap of mercy she might possess. “Please, you can’t.”
She purses her lips and reaches for a medical bag. “Is for your own good. You will see.”
A high-pitched sound vibrates off the bedroom walls, and the shock on Nikolai’s face is the only indication I have that it’s originating from me. I’m screaming. Crying and begging and kicking, desperate to break free.
This time, it’s the doctor who issues a command to Nikolai. Across the room, his eyes move to mine, and for a few fleeting seconds, he spares a glimpse of his humanity. He is hesitant. It’s fast, only a flash in time, and if I blinked, I would have missed it, but I didn’t. I saw his moment of weakness, and I’m desperate to nurture it.
“Please,” I beg.
I become nonexistent to him again when he falls into order and holds my arm firmly in place as the doctor establishes the IV. I stop thrashing, but only because I’m afraid of the needle.
“What are you giving me?”
They both choose to ignore me, but their responses aren’t necessary. The effects of the sedative make themselves known around the time the doctor begins making her preparations and understanding dawns on me slowly. It isn’t just a sedative I’m getting today.
It’s a feeding tube.