"I respect my father."
Respect. Obey?
Submit, as she had to Nadežda? Pay the prize when he didn’t?
Liliya thought she glimpsed something beneath the fog of her mind, but it felt so flimsy. So flighty. It was gone before she could fully grasp it. The throbbing pain had grown now, spreading until it seemed to engulf her entire skull, taking what little thinking power remained. All she could do was watch as her thoughts drifted past, tantalisingly close and utterly untouchable.
She barely had time to feel frustrated before Lev’s sudden reprimand dispersed the thought like smoke.
"Liliya, for fucks sake, you were fucking a stable hand at the Laurences' castle!”
His words cut like a knife, slashing deep into her core, and Liliya couldn’t help but flinch. Her shoulders bowed beneath the harshness of his tone, hands worrying together in her lap like an admonished child’s, and the same old shame seeped back in—three months of defiance, wiped clean.
Square one.
“Do you understand what that sort of thing could do to the family? To the reputation we have worked to build in England? Thank Dazhbog that your friend's cousin was willing to handle this discreetly."
For some reason, that hurt more than what her aunt had done.
Lev’s chidings—always the worst.
She hadn’t cared about the consequences; she could remember that. She had been fed up, and lonely, and defiant, and sad, and she hadn’t given a single fuck what any of it might mean for the family’s reputation, or for herself. In fact, she had welcomed repercussions—happy to drag them all down to hell with her and watch them burn.
And yet, here she sat. Kneeling on the floor beside the man she was still to marry, ashamed and humiliated, exactly where she had been before. Only now with a mind that could barely hold itself together at the seams.
None of it had mattered. Nothing had changed a thing. She was trapped here, and this was all she’d ever get.
Liliya didn’t lift her head. Her eyes remained fixed on the little jar of bruise paste in her hands, her fingers twiddling at a loose corner of the label as she fought back tears.
"I stopped her because she didn't do what we agreed upon. She was only meant to go surface level. To make you understand that you can't keep doing shit like this.”
Surface level. So she would understand she couldn’t keep doing shit like this. Well. She supposed he had gotten what he wanted, hadn’t he? She was powerless, and she had lost, and she finally understood. She had never stood a chance.
Defeat settled over her heart with crushing weight.
"I never wanted her to torture you or break you. And...I don't know why I stayed. I just did."
Silence. His words uselessly drifted between them.
"I don't want to keep doing all of this.”
Liliya swallowed thickly. Another moment stretched before she finally looked up. Her eyes found Lev, glazed with unshed tears, but damn her if she would cry in front of him. She nodded once, then dropped her gaze.
“Okay.” It was all she could say. Quiet and thin. All that she had left.
Compliance, after all.
She didn’t know how to keep running anymore. She was too tired. Too beaten. So she would stop.
Swallowing the rest of her tears, Liliya took a breath. She dipped her finger back into the jar. And then she returned to the bruises along Lev’s ribcage.
