Ivan Press

Ivan Kirillevich

On the thirtieth of April, the day before Anton's birthday, Ivan trades the house staff for Dmitri. Go, enjoy yourselves, he says to Miron and Polina and Izolda as he waves them out the door. There'll be a bonus for you in the mail.

Miron is delighted. He thinks it's ever so generous of Ivan, and he tells Polina as much as they're driving to the train station. The car technically belongs to Anton, but Miron is usually the one driving it. Izolda's husband picks her up in the evenings after Anton has been put to bed. And Polina, when she needs to get somewhere, usually and stubbornly takes public transportation. Healthier, she insists. Better for the environment. They must all do their part. At the train station, she'll get on the commuter line into the city, where she keeps a small apartment. Miron, meanwhile, will turn toward the suburbs, where he'll call all the friends he hasn't seen for weeks or months and have them over for dinner. Polina thinks he's a fool; obviously they were only getting today off because tomorrow they'll be expected to work their tails off for Anton's birthday. Don't be such a pessimist, Miron replies, laughing, and Polina only snorts.

Tomorrow we'll see who is right, she says as she gets out of the car. Miron waves goodbye. Polina gives him a flat stare and turns to walk away.

--

At Anton's house on the outskirts of the city, Dmitri arrives minutes later and is given full charge of the baby. And, really, the running of the house: all the tiny little details that must be attended to, and attended to both regularly and rigorously, lest the sky fall on Ivan and his lady's pretty, posh heads. He makes some discreet calls to make contact with certain people, inquire on certain things, arrange for certain contingencies: all on the off chance that Ivan, fickle mercurial creature that he is, comes up with some sort of last-minute plan to run off to the French Alps and ski for a week.

Then Dmitri changes Anton. And orders lunch.

It's still Russian cuisine, but it's well-made and it's rushed out to them from some classy little restaurant in the town center. It's a mild day outside, pleasant, a few fluffy clouds in the sunlit sky. They eat outside on a little wire patio set that Ivan moves out onto the grass. He's barefoot, his pant-cuffs rolled up to mid-shin, his shirtsleeves rolled up to just below the elbow. The grass tickles the bottoms of his feet. Dmitri brings the boy outside too. Ivan mostly ignores the both of them.

After lunch it's up to Dmitri to clean up the dishes and the silverware. Ivan takes Hilary down to the lake, where they find the boat Miron sometimes rows Anton and Polina and Izolda around in moored on the beach. It's tiny compared to the gleaming white yachts they both own: a dozen feet at most from prow to stern, with two rows of plank seating and a little storage space under the bow. Simple. Rustic.

The afternoon is spent thus, lazily: the oars flashing languidly as Ivan rows them, or trailing in the water when he rests. He undoes the top buttons of his shirt. He rolls up his pants legs and his shirtsleeves more, until his knees are bare, until his arms are turning golden in the spring sunshine. His hair gleams, and his eyelashes are molten in the light, half-lidded. Reclining in the bottom of the boat, he's lean and leonine in his repose. Eventually he calls Hilary to him from where she sits at the stern. He takes her hat off as she comes to him, and her hair slips through his fingers like water, like silk. He kisses her slowly, tastingly. The bottom of a rowboat isn't the most comfortable place in the world to fuck. So they don't. But he seats her with her back to his chest, leaning against him. He lets her rest against him, his eyes closed, her warmth and her presence suffusing his senses as they drift on the current.

--

The shadows are growing long when they come back to shore. They never went out into deep water. They circled the shoreline, the bottom always in view. He remembers what she's afraid of. He does terrible things to her, calls her hair-raising names, treats her in ways that would have horrified her kin, would horrify their tribe. Superficially, anyway. Who knows what perversions hide behind those placid aristocratic masks. Who knows what they all indulge in. At least Ivan and Hilary have this much; at least he has this much to console himself with: he is terrible to her sometimes, but then -- she wants him to be terrible. And in the end,

he does love her. She is terrible and broken and barely human at all, but he thinks she is beautiful, right to the bottom of those cracks in her soul, right to the center of her infestation and decay.

See that, as he jumps out of the boat in those last few feet. See the way he smiles as he as he walks her to shore, wading through waist-deep water at her side. It's still too cold to swim. A month ago this lake may well have been frozen. This is Russia. He's shivering a little as he drags the boat up onto the beach, but his hand is still warm as he helps her safe and dry onto solid ground. He puts his arm around her. Her hat trails from his hand. They come in through the back door, and Dmitri is feeding Anton at the kitchen table. Ivan is interested in the boy again. He goes to play with him for a while. Then he puts the boy in his high chair at the table, sets Dmitri on him faithful as a hound, and goes to see about dinner.

Neither he nor Hilary really want to cook. They're hungry by then from their excursion. They find some leftover roast from the night before. They find a loaf of fresh bread in the breadbox, which Izolda must have baked in the early morning before Ivan even woke to send her home. And they find some pesto sauce and some cheese; some foie gras, some caviar. Dinner is a strange thing, a jumbled juxtaposition of the elegant and the simple. There's vodka, too: a label even Ivan has never heard of, something local and native to the region, crisp and clear and just a little sweet.

They ignore the kitchen table again. They eat in the small parlor this time, with a fire lit, with the dark night shut out by heavy curtains. Dmitri sees them there, sees his master in the large armchair with the mother of his child on his lap, sees him feeding her from his own plate, giving her sips from his own glass that he keeps refilling over and over again. Dmitri decides to put Anton to bed, and Dmitri decides -- quietly, and with the autonomy of a truly experienced servant -- to stay the night. Just in case the boy needed him.

They leave the remnants of their dinner scattered on the coffee table. Ivan has downed enough vodka that he's just a little unsteady going up the stairs. Hilary is never sloppy. She doesn't trip on her own feet. He ushers her upstairs ahead of him, something wolfish in his eyes. They go up and up again, and he closes the door to their private suite behind them. He's tearing off his clothes almost before the door latches. She's pretending not to notice, drifting to the nightstand to take her earrings off. He catches her around the waist. She makes him fight a little to have her. He throws her down on the bed, she claws for his face, he pins her hands and tears at her clothes. He tells her to look, he makes her watch. He covers her mouth when she starts to moan. He's so tender with her then, and so brutal.

Later on, much later, he holds her so close as they sleep. His last thought before slumber overtakes him: she slept like this the night they made Anton. Before he took her to his bed. Before they fucked like they couldn't help themselves. She came to him for shelter, and he took her in, and he wanted to shun her but he couldn't. He guarded her while she slept; slept with her while she rested. It felt right, like that was his place.

--

In the morning, when they wake, it's the first of May, and their son is a year old. Miron is right after all, and Polina is furious because she has been made wrong: they are not summoned back to the house to work their tails off for some ridiculous, opulent, fancy feast in honor of a tiny boy who won't even remember it. They are told to take another day off.

So it's just the four of them. Ivan and Hilary and Anton and Dmitri. It is a small, quiet, tender affair, this first birthday of Anton's, so far as anything Ivan has a hand in is small or quiet or tender. There are toys -- so many toys -- and there are presents and wrappers and ribbons and,

and,

and in the afternoon Hilary sifts flour and pours sugar and Ivan is set to the inglorious task of stirring the batter, no you're stirring the wrong way, and the oven is turned on and Dmitri has to help with this too because the buttons are in Russian and Ivan has no idea and can't be bothered to try and figure it out.

What comes out is a lovely little cake. Ivan looks bemused when he sees it, and possibly a little surprised. He knows she can cook. He just still didn't quite believe she could bake. Or something. At the table, as Dmitri dutifully sets a single candle onto the cake, Ivan slips his arm around Hilary's waist and kisses her temple. Kisses her behind her ear.

Clever, lovely girl, he murmurs. And then they help Anton blow out his candle.

--

The next day the servants are packing their bags. The servants are stripping their bed. The servants are putting dropcloths over the furniture in their attic suite, and the servants are loading the car, prepping the jet, for their trip back to Chicago.

Hilary is in the nursery. They have exchanged that cage of a crib for the small, low mattress on the rug. They have switched out some of the old toys for the new, and -- at Dmitri's suggestion -- they have put some of the more advanced toys away until Anton is old enough for them. She is watching Anton, or she is holding Anton, or she is doing whatever it is she might do with her firstborn, her only child, when Ivan comes to the doorway behind her.

He leans against the doorjamb, elegant and sleek and feral. He is absurdly sharply dressed, simply for the hell of it. His vest is a subtly patterned silver brocade and his tie is a narrow, understated black. His slacks are dark and sleekly tailored. Those agile hands of his rest in his pockets.

"We could take him with us," he says softly.

Are you certain? she asked him, as he was waving away the servants, sweeping them out of the house like a maid with a broom. And he saw her hands, fingertips rubbing cuticles and tightening, twisting on each other, and pulled them together in his cupped palms, kissing her knuckles, telling her that Dmitri was coming. Hilary is tense as a deer frozen in mid-flight, nodding a bit. She let her hair dry naturally this morning and it hangs around her shoulders just the way Ivan likes it, in long and unruly waves. She is dressed in ivory, something long and slim, loose around her lower legs, overlaid with a crochet. Her arms are bared, but there is a shawl she can wear later, a hat.

Dmitri takes care of Anton, who is cruising a great deal, walking himself along furniture and blowing raspberries with his lips. He falls onto his hands and knees often, crawling again because it is faster for him, chewing on anything he gets his hands on. Hilary stays near him, and thus near Dmitri, but she doesn't interfere with him. She does not quite know what to do, other than watch him while someone else takes true care of him.

Ivan wants to eat outside, and she goes, draping her shawl over her shoulders and putting on that large-brimmed hat to protect her fair skin from the sun. She does not ignore the child but wants him in her lap for a bit, feeding him bits of food that is soft enough for his mostly-toothless mouth to take. Oh, she delights in him. She coos over him, just like she did on their outing yesterday, and when he arches his back and whines she sets him on the grass, where he promptly tries to eat some of the ground and its growing things, which Dmitri puts a stop to.

Hilary wants to take Anton on the boat. Dmitri gently but firmly discourages it, listing off all the things Anton will need to be on the lake, and Hilary gets bored halfway through the list. She tells Dmitri the boy should watch them, though, and perhaps he does, but out on the water she forgets that, too. She leans back against Ivan's chest and drowses while he kisses her, but she forces him to hold her hat up above her face to keep her from burning, freckling, whatever it is that so terrifies her about the light. He indulges her, and kisses her, and they stay out there for hours and hours.

--

Her feet never touch the water. Ivan draws them up to the shore with her in the boat, lifts her up against his own body, and sets her down on dry earth, in part because Hilary will not leave the damn boat otherwise. She is barefoot, loose-haired, dressed in that pale color when they walk into the house. Anton yells at them, which is sort of a hello. He turned his head at the last second while being fed, and a smear of pureed fruit ends up across his cheek while he babbles. Hilary is thrilled, and ignores Dmitri while she teases Anton and distracts him from eating. Ivan puts 'dinner' together, thumping the bottle of vodka down on the table. They've barely even begun to eat when it is time for Anton to be put to bed. Dmitri walks him through the parlor to at least glance at his parents before going to sleep.

Hilary looks at Ivan. For permission. And he lets her go up, though she's only gone for a few minutes, fussing in Dmitri's way. She wants to kiss the boy and hold him, and she does. She rocks with him a little, their black eyes staring at each other, as though they can share each other's thoughts. It's a horrifying prospect. When the baby is beginning to drowse, Hilary asks him in a whisper if he likes his new bed, to which Dmitri gently, quietly tells her that Anton is very tired, and when you are very tired, any bed is a good bed.

Hilary understands this more deeply than many would. She does not want much in life. Food when she is hungry. A bed when she is tired. Her odd but beloved mate. Her unwanted but precious son. Sometimes the sunlight, and sometimes to dance.

"That's true," she murmurs, and that is all.

--

Back downstairs, they may as well be alone. They eat, Hilary leaning against Ivan. He feeds her sometimes. He gives her sips of vodka, which she grimaces at and turns away from but takes as obediently as a child with medicine. He stops trying after a while; he asks if she wants wine, there's likely some in the cellar, but she won't go and won't let him leave her and going together does not seem to occur to them. So: when they go to bed, Hilary is not drunk at all but a bit tipsy, lazy from the vodka more than stupefied by it. She walks ahead of him, and he touches her elbow and her arm unnecessarily.

She looks over her shoulder at him, breath caught in her throat when she sees the look in his eyes. Her heart stops a bit and she shakes her head, whispers no and that only makes him rush her up, hand tightening on her arm, push-pulling her into the bedroom at the top of the landing, throwing her on the bed and tearing his clothes off, pushing her dress up, up, yanking her panties down, covering her mouth. There is no pretense of ignoring him. There is no clawing at his face. She could not fight him now if she wanted to. He takes her roughly, firmly, grunting in her ear when he feels her coming, uttering filth when his own orgasm drags him under.

Afterwards she is drowsy, staring at him in a way she wouldn't when he was fucking her. Her eyes are so deep, so black, and the moon is coming through the high window in their attic apartment, illuminating her skin but never touching those eyes. She stares at him the way she stared earlier at their son, though he can't know that: as though they could share their thoughts. Their dark, unholy, poignant little thoughts,

but that somehow only makes her seem more far away, shows him how strangely untouchable she is, how she is where light goes to die, where there is no air, where there is only a vast emptiness filled with equal parts serenity and rage.

Odd, that looking into her thus makes him tender, of all things. But he is, when he gradually removes the rest of his clothing and her dress, telling her not to wash up, to stay, and of course in this state she just obeys. She lets him move her like a doll and lays out beside him, held by him, awake for a very long time even when he starts to drift off. Sometimes being awake in the silence and darkness of night, all alone in consciousness, makes her feel like she is not quite alive, and this,

as odd as Ivan's love for her,

is comforting.

--

On May Day, Miron is right and Polina is furious. Ivan is telling them to take another day off, but Darya is summoned in from the little hotel that she and Carlisle are staying at in Novgorod. Hilary has her upstairs to straighten and smooth her hair, to help her apply a light makeup, to zip her up in her dress. Overhearing Ivan talking to Miron in English, Hilary turns her head and tells him, plaintively:

no.

She wants them to come back. Izolda who nursed -- and nurses -- him, Polina who makes things run smoothly, Miron who all but fathers the poor child. They should be there, Hilary says, anxiety creeping into her voice and into the furrow in her brow. Tell them to come.

He refuses her nothing.

--

Hilary is not a baker. She does, however, know how to make a cake, and does so, wearing an apron over her clothes after Darya has pulled her hair up and back out of her face. She makes it very small, because she is not thinking of the cake serving anyone but Anton, and she does not want her child to be fat and disgusting. She makes buttercream icing and smooths it over the cakes, a tiny circular layered affair that she then decorates with a knife since she has nothing to pipe with, and the candle is not a birthday candle but a little tealight found somewhere by Izolda.

It is a small party. There are all the presents wrapped by the servants. There are the servants. There are his mother and father. Hilary has changed into something new, which is white and smooth and inappropriately short and far too elegant for this affair, but she seems to all but gleam with happiness as the staff helps Anton unwrap his gifts. It is all quite overwhelming for the boy, who does not get worked up enough to cry but mostly throws paper around.

Ivan slips his arm around her waist and kisses her where he does. Ivan feels a shiver of arousal go up her spine. They slip away upstairs for a while as the servants play with Anton and his new toys. She bends over the windowsill for him as he takes her from behind, their breath panting, his cock sliding wet and hot into her, out of her, in again -- harder now, faster, slut.

--

In just one day they are preparing to leave and Hilary is being a monster. She is snapping at everyone, Ivan included. At one point she throws a curling iron, while hot, at Darya, the cord yanked out of the wall, the girl shrieking slightly as she ducks out of the way, covering her head and retreating instantly from the attic. Hilary all but snarls at Dmitri at another point, calling him the vilest things in French, and every time she so much as sees Izolda or Miron she threatens to claw their eyes out if they don't GET OUT.

Eventually, she storms away from all of them, spitting curses under her breath, snapping at Polina to get out of the nursery before she throws her down the stairs. Say this for Hilary: she absolutely means it, and Polina does in fact leave. But say this for Polina: she doesn't scurry. She holds her head up high as she leaves.

Things quiet down a bit after that. Darya packs Hilary's things and Carlisle takes them to the car. The staff throws cloths over furniture. Hilary sits on the thick rug that now takes up the space right beside Anton's new bed, and Anton is lying on his side, bashing a squeaky block against the ground to listen to the chiming noise it makes. It's very annoying. Hilary looks serene, though, still as a portrait or a monument, watching him blabber to himself as he plays.

The door opens and her head turns, her eyes murderous for a moment, explicitly threatening, until she sees that it is Ivan. Then they are merely wary, hesitant, silent.

We could take him with us.

Hilary's crest entirely falls.

Who knows what Ivan thought he would elicit with such a scandalous suggestion. Ivan certainly didn't know, and likely didn't think of it. So often he doesn't think at all, beautiful, blessed, careless creature that he is, of what his words and actions can conjure. He didn't think what would come of calling out across the water on that fair July weekend, from his yacht to hers. He didn't think, and didn't care, what would come of fucking her,

over and over and over and over,

of impregnating her, of conspiring with her to have their baby born and smuggled away, of bringing her here a year later to see him, celebrate his birthday, show her just how much she could not stand to be traded off to yet another Silver Fang who wanted -- however elegant his euphemisms and terms -- to fuck her.

Or this. Didn't think what that suggestion would work in that dark, mad mind of hers. Still: he is not insensate, and he is not dull. Whatever he did-not-expect, it was not this. At the door, Ivan cocks his head to the side. Then, soundlessly, he rises from his lean and crosses the floor; gives his trousers a thoughtless, practiced tug to slacken the knee as he crouches.

His longfingered hand takes that abominable squeaky block from Anton. When the boy begins to protest, Ivan replaces it with something else, some soft plush thing that does not squeak when it hits the ground, goodness. And all the while his eyes are on Hilary, his brow lining with the raising of his eyebrows.

"What's the matter?" he asks softly.

Anton is rolling onto his back, yawning, playing with his block while his father comes into the nursery to see his mother. He looks over at them, mostly Ivan, aware of the adult male's rage and presence with a curious tension that does not quite descend into terror. He gurgles, 'talking' at them, but Ivan likely ignores him.

Hilary's shoulders have rounded down, her eyes sad, her lips parting. He crouches near her, and her eyes track down to keep his gaze as he lowers. Ivan takes the damn block and Anton just yells, wordless and unfuriated, then whining, reaching for it, rolling over.

The look Hilary gives Ivan is affronted, aghast, even angry: how dare he take something from their child like that. So even when the toy is replaced, and Anton is shaking the plush rabbit to see if it makes noise, if there is an effect to his cause, if he can make it do something,

Ivan turns back to Hilary and she is frowning at him, the same storminess in her eyes that she was giving to anyone who so much as breathed in her presence this morning.

"Clearly," she says icily, "that would work out poorly."

"Some might argue," Ivan either doesn't notice or pretends not to notice her black cloud of a mood, "that everything we've done has worked out poorly. It hasn't stopped us from doing any of it. It hasn't made me regret a single thing."

That squeaky toy turns over in his hands. It doesn't squeak now. His touch is deft, light. He spins the block between his fingers, dances it over his knuckles like an oversized die. He sets it gently, soundlessly down; pins it beneath three fingers.

"Not a single thing," he repeats, softer. "So it's up to you. It is a bad idea. It will be risky. It may even be dangerous. But if it's what you want, it's what we'll do."

Anton is bored with the toy he was given. It doesn't make noise. It doesn't show him his own face. It's dull. He throws it, looks after it, considers chasing it, then rolls over. Hilary looks down at him, smiles a small and incongruous smile, reaching her fingers out to wiggle at him. He stares up at her, and yawns again, then scoots around on his stomach and goes for the block that A) his father stole and B) his father is taunting him with by holding it on the floor. He starts crawling for it.

Hilary's hair brushes over her face as she watches the child, half-ignoring Ivan as he talks. "Not everything," she argues, all the same; just the other day they agreed that this, this thing they made: it's good. They did something good.

She just shakes her head. "I don't want you to talk about this anymore," and she is still shaking her head, refusing the idea itself as Anton is at Ivan's side, pushing at the block, making a whining, demanding noise to get at his toy.

Peevishly, then, unrelated: "You should give him back the damned block, Ivan."

Ivan exhales: it's half laughter, half annoyance. "I don't know why we bought this hideous thing in the first place," he says, and relinquishes it. The noise starts up again. They are both watching their boy now, at least for a few moments. Then it's just Hilary watching Anton while Ivan watches Hilary.

"Not everything," he echoes, a throwback. There is a small pause. "We're almost finished packing. We'll stay for lunch. Even dinner, if you'd like. But then we should go."

This is often how Ivan handles his irritation -- with Hilary, with things around Hilary. He laughs lightly, tightly, a bit dangerously. She watches as he gives the block up and it ends up in Anton's fist, then in Anton's mouth, the boy smacking it with his palms and hitting it against the ground to make it shriek and squeak.

Why did they get him such a hideous thing.

Look at him: he has his father's fair skin and hair, his father's eagerness to see some toy of his scream.

--

Hilary just shakes her head. "I don't want to stay," she says quietly, tightly, dishonestly and necessarily.

Another moment Ivan's mutable, penetrating eyes rest on Hilary. She's not a terribly good liar. The ugly truth is, she's not terribly good at anything, really, except dancing. Cooking. Destroying lives without even meaning to, or caring. He still adores her beyond all rhyme or reason.

Ivan's attention shifts to Anton for a few ticks. He reaches out to the boy, touches the soft skin of his chubby little wrist. It is as much goodbye as he means to give him, this errant firstborn of his, though later on Miron will bring him downstairs for his parents to kiss goodbye as they're leaving.

"All right," Ivan says. He unbends, rising smoothly to his feet. "Twenty minutes, then."

--

It doesn't take very long for everything to be loaded into the car. Not Ivan's rental, of course: the servants' car. For a while afterward, Ivan stands in the small front parlor with Miron. They converse in Russian. It is fluent, and fast, and likely unintelligible to Hilary -- but then, when she appears at the top of the stairs, Ivan turns to see her. Switches seamlessly to English. He's talking about Anton, it turns out. Ironing out a few small details. Like getting a better cook. And someone to teach him French.

Then, entirely too soon, the front door is open and the trio who are perhaps more family to Anton than his actual parents could ever be are assembling, are walking Ivan and Hilary outside. It's before noon. There's still a nip in the air. Izolda puts a tiny, light jacket on Anton, and Miron gives him to his parents to kiss goodbye. Ivan cups a hand behind the boy's head and kisses him gently, a little bit perfunctorily, on the brow.

When he steps back, he slips his arm around Hilary. There's something supportive, protective about it: as though she were the fragile one in this odd little equation of theirs, and not Anton.

There is no way to make this smooth, or make it okay. There was no way to make it easy or make it tolerable when they met that strange November day to look at pictures of the boy, to watch him over video conference. Hilary is sick to her stomach. Ivan was right, when he watched her holding the boy and told her that he thought she could not bear to lose him again.

She can't. She doesn't bear anything. What her parents did to each other. What happened to her brother. Dominique, Espiridion. To suggest that she could have ever borne any of these things would be to make her something inhuman. She hasn't borne any of it, and she hasn't even truly survived it. Hilary continues living, but her mind is shattered. Her soul, whatever there was of it in childhood, floats in pieces through the darkness. Of course she can't bear to lose Anton again. It doesn't mean that she won't, as she ever has, keep living all the same.

Twenty minutes, Ivan says, and Hilary does not nod or say yes or indicate that she has heard him. She lays down on her side on the rug, watching their son.

I think he's my soul.

--

The nursery door closes behind him, quietly. The staff continues in their reprieve from the woman's rage, and the ones who will be staying in Russia with him start to think fondly of things returning to normal after Anton's parents are gone. She lies there on the rug with him, watching him, sometimes playing idly with him, rolling a ball back and forth. He babbles to her. She speaks to him in French. They don't really understand each other, but he sits up and bounces on his rear end while gnawing on his block, grunting because he cannot use words.

Hilary smiles, painfully, thinking madly and chaotically of taking him with her, flying him back to the States right now, right away, holding him, never letting him go,

with only hope to go on that Dion would not come for him and kill him, that Edmund Grey would not, that she would not damage him irreparably.

--

It is not Miron who walks Anton downstairs. Or Izolda. Or Polina. Or Dmitri. One of them knocks gently on the nursery, cracking the door to murmur to her that they are about ready to leave. Hilary says nothing, and Anton is lying with his head on her arm now, rubbing his face on her bicep, sleepy but resistant. The door closes just as quietly.

A little while later, she comes downstairs, carrying her son. Ivan and Miron are talking about a cook, a tutor or something, and the door is open. Everyone is afraid to go near Hilary and suggest they take Anton for her. In the end, she gives him to no one. She holds him, and he is drowsy enough to just be resting his head on her shoulder, his mouth slack and his eyes drifting closed and open again, her hand flat against his back.

There's a drawn, distant look on her face, hollowed-out and harrowed. She puts him down on the couch, on those wide seats, her hair falling from her shoulders to sweep over him when she lays him down on his stomach. She doesn't kiss him after that. Her hand grazes his back, and then she rights herself, turns, and walks out of the house, out through the open door, to the rental car that holds no luggage and no servants.

If he tries to touch her she pulls away. If he tries to speak to her she ignores him. Her eyes stare ahead, and her hand curls into a tight, white-knuckled fist on her lap when the engine starts and the car pulls forward. Hilary does not so much as blink as Ivan drives them away from the house. There's no adorable waving, no protracted goodbyes -- in most cases, no goodbyes at all. She doesn't even watch the countryside as they pass through it, staring at a point on the vintage dashboard, her black eyes soulless,

her soul emptied out,

though it was never really full.