by Vivian Wood
Yelena tells me that the USF started as a political group in Sveloria, not terrorists. They were populists, for the most part, and they wanted western-style reforms: a free press, free assembly. Some kind of representation in the government, even if it was only ornamental, but Kostya’s father refused everything, sometimes even tightening restrictions.
So the USF radicalized, becoming violent, and when they did, Kostya’s father crushed them mercilessly. The remnants fled to the mountains, where Kostya himself fought them years later.
Just as Yelena finishes, there’s another wave of shouting. Before Yelena can translate, Kostya storms out of the room, past us, and up the stairs. There’s the sound of a heavy door slamming shut, and then a moment of total silence before people stream after him.
I look at Yelena.
“Something like, ‘If they want to fucking kill me I won’t wait for death like a fox in a hole,’” she says, frowning. “Do foxes have holes? Is that the right animal?”
“They do,” I say.
Then we look at each other. I shrug. Yelena kind of shrugs.
“Let’s get out of this stupid bunker,” she says.
Yelena and I work side-by-side through the afternoon, into the night and just past sunrise. The palace was full of people who don’t live here, so we find beds and food for everyone. Communications are still up, so I work with one ear listening to the BBC. After a long time, my text to my parents that I’m alive finally gets through, and minutes later, CNN is reporting that there’s an American citizen among those holed up in Velinsk.
I’m on my back, underneath a desk, trying to troubleshoot an ancient desktop computer as Yelena translates the error messages for me when someone comes into the room and nearly kicks my head.
I look up. It’s some kid, maybe fifteen.
“Are you Hazel Sung?” he asks in English.
“Yes,” I say.
“America’s calling,” he says.
He doesn’t get more specific. I follow him through the noisy halls of the palace to the cabinet offices, then into a large meeting room. It’s nearly empty: two officials and Kostya, all looking at a blurry projection on the wall. They look tired, totally exhausted.
“Miss Sung?” a voice says from a speaker.
“Yes,” I say.
One of the officials points at a chair and I sit.
“I’m Marcia Bloom, the Secretary of State,” the projection says, and I blink at it.
“Pleased to meet you,” I say automatically.
“I wish these were better circumstances,” she says. “I’ve known your mother for many years.”
I just nod.
Our meeting only lasts five, maybe ten minutes. I think she just wants to make sure that I’m all right and not under duress, and she seems relieved that I’m acting relatively normal. She asks me to keep her updated on the situation, but also makes a vague comment about working for the state department on an informal basis.
I’m too tired to parse that, but when the call ends, I’m relieved that they made contact and I’m not all alone out here. It makes me feel better to think that someone’s watching me.
As I leave the room, Kostya rises, and then the two other men rise. Kostya waves them down, but then escorts me out and shuts the door behind him. We’re in a hallway that’s not exactly private, but there’s no one immediately around us.
“Thank you,” he says.
I look around. There’s no one. I take one of his hands in both of mine. I squeeze it, but he doesn’t squeeze back.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, uselessly.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says. “I don’t know how this is going to go, but we would very much like to have the U.S. on our side.”
There’s no one here, I think. Say something real.
I feel awful immediately. This is probably the worst day of his life, and I’m upset about me?
His hand is still in mine. I just nod. I’ve been awake for almost twenty-four hours, most of those hours have been bad, and I’m trying not to cry.
“Of course,” I say. “Anything I can do to help.”
I squeeze his hand again. He holds on, but he doesn’t squeeze back.
I let his hand go.
He swallows, looking at me for a long time.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and then goes back into the meeting room.
Chapter Thirty
Kostya
Four days later, I’m staring at the iPad that Niko just handed me, and Hazel’s face stares back. It’s an old picture, badly lit, a little blurry.
But it’s unmistakably her. And she’s unmistakably wearing a lacy bra, lacy panties, a garter belt, hose, and sky-high heels. She’s got a big red cup in her hand, and she and another girl dressed the same way are leaning on some guy as he reaches around and grabs both girls’ breasts.
I’m furious. I’ve slept maybe eight hours in the last four nights, ever since my father was assassinated, and my temper is on a hair trigger. I want to murder this fucking asshole in the photo for touching Hazel. I want to murder the shithead who published this trash, and I want to murder the small-dicked douchebag who found the photo in the first place.
“If this is what I get for removing censorship from the press put it the fuck back in place,” I growl at Niko. “Fucking behead them all. Drown them in the Black Sea. I don’t care.”
He doesn’t move. He knows better than to actually do any of that.
“Read the article,” he says, arms crossed.
I scan it. Fucking salacious trash, obviously. The Tobov Post isn’t even a newspaper, it’s a rumormongering website that normally limits itself to movie stars and pop singers. Now that there are no consequences for reporting on whatever they want, they’ve instantly latched onto the rumors about the brand-new king and his American girlfriend.
Then I pause. I re-read a sentence.
My heart stops for a moment.
Sources also say that Sung, 25, dropped out of medical school after carrying on a sexual affair with her married professor.
Niko and I stare at each other. We’re alone in a tiny office.
“Is it true?” he asks, his voice low.
I clench my jaw. My stomach plummets, because I want to say no, of course not. I want to say she’s awkward, not despicable, but I can’t. I never did find out why she dropped out of medical school.
“I don’t know,” I say.
I’ve barely seen her in four days, and I haven’t been alone with her for more than two minutes. The last time was yesterday when I was taking a breather in a nook off a staircase, looking out the window, and she charged through the door with an armful of ethernet cables, heading somewhere else.
Neither of us said a word. We just looked at each other for a few seconds, and briefly, I felt like my capsizing world was righting itself again, like maybe there was this one small spark of light.
Then one of the cabinet aides burst through the door, asking her what kind of cables they were looking for, and they were gone again.
All I thought about for hours was the look on her face.
My father’s dead, my country’s falling apart, and I’m thinking about the way a girl looked at me.
That’s why it’s probably better that I don’t see her.
I last three hours. It’s driving me crazy, the incessant, gnawing worry that Hazel isn’t who I thought she was. That she would do that, sleep with a married man. Be a home wrecker.
I don’t even know why it matters right now. I’m deliberately trying to see her as little as possible, and I have no idea what she thinks about that, but everything has gone to shit and I’m doing the best I can. The second I can get the airport re-opened I’m sending her home, and God only knows if she’ll ever want to come back to this hellhole.
I send someone to go find her. When she walks in her hair is in a high, messy bun, her eyes are puffy and purple with lack of sleep, she’s wearing ill-fitting jeans and a t-shirt, and she�
�s still more beautiful than I remembered and I hate it.
Neither of us say anything. The aide leaves and shuts the door behind him. My heart feels like it’s pumping sandpaper through my veins.
“Did the State Department call again?” she asks.
“No,” I say, and hand her the iPad with the article on it.
“Fuck,” she says, looking at the picture. “What is this? What’s it say?”
I’d forgotten the article was in Russian, but there’s a link to an English translation at the bottom. I take it back and click it.
“That picture is from college,” she says, pinching the bridge of her nose between her finger and thumb. “It’s six years old, I was dumb and drunk and I went to a lingerie-themed party at this frat house because I was hoping—”
“Read the article,” I say, handing it back.
She scans it. Halfway through she puts one hand to her mouth. When she finishes, she squeezes her eyes shut for a long moment, like she’s trying to collect herself.
“You never told me why you dropped out of med school,” I say.
“I didn’t know he was married,” she says, still not looking at me.
I want to believe her. I want desperately to believe her, but how could she not know?
“How?” I ask, my arms folded across my chest.
Hazel pulls out a chair, thumps the iPad onto the desk, puts her head in her hands, and takes a deep breath.
“My last year of med school, I was miserable,” she says quietly. “I’d realized I didn’t want to be there anymore, I didn’t have any friends, I didn’t like what I was doing, but I was too much of a pussy to drop out and admit that I’d fucked up and wasted a couple of years.”
She thumps a fingertip on the table.
“So when my young, cute professor asked me to drinks to ‘talk about my work,’ I said yes, because I was flattered that he asked me, and because I felt like I couldn’t make things any worse,” she says, swallowing. “He told me he’d just gotten divorced, and when we went back to his place it was this ugly one-bedroom apartment full of boxes and crappy furniture, and he didn’t have a ring on, so I just believed him.”
Even though this is all in the past, jealousy tightens in my chest at the thought of Hazel with someone else.
She’s staring at the table, her eyes vacant and empty, leaning her head against one hand, and she swallows again and sighs.
“We weren’t supposed to be fucking in the first place, so I didn’t tell anyone, so there wasn’t anyone to say, ‘Hey, watch out, Evan’s actually just separated and he told me that they’re still trying to make things work,’ and it wasn’t like I was going to look up divorce records,” she says, her finger slowly tracing circles on the table.
“And then one day I came over late at night, and his wife was there, and he sat on the couch while she screamed at me and called me a stupid slut. He wouldn’t even look at me.”
Hazel clears her throat, and I frown in disbelief.
“He let her do that?” I ask.
“Yup.”
“He did this to you and then let another woman call you names?” I ask, my voice getting hard.
Hazel just looks up at me.
“Spineless coward,” I say. “Are all American men sniveling worms?”
She smiles, looks at me, and stops.
“No, I just got lucky,” she says. “And he didn’t do this to me. I knew better than to sleep with him in the first place, but I did it anyway. I just thought it was a bad decision for a different reason. Anyway, I dropped out of school, sublet my apartment, and sold a bunch of my stuff, and traveled for a few months because I figured if I was going to be a fuckup I should at least be a fuckup doing something I really wanted to do, and now I’m here.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.
She looks at her hands and flexes her fingers, like maybe she’s holding the answer there.
“I didn’t know how,” she said. “At what point was I supposed to say, hey, here’s the worst thing I’ve ever done?”
“At any point,” I say, and I’m tired and irritable as fuck. I miss her even though she’s right here, and I feel like I can’t have her any more, so I’m picking a fight. “Anything would be better than finding this out from the fucking Tobov Post.”
“Right, because now everyone knows that the American girl dresses slutty and fucks peoples’ husbands,” she says, and she sounds angry but also sad and tired. “I’m sorry, Kostya. I fucked up then, and I keep fucking up, and I’m sorry.”
“What else?” I ask.
“What else what?” she says, leaning back and crossing her arms.
“What else don’t I know?” I ask. “What else is the fucking Tobov Post going to smear you with?”
“It’s not a smear if it’s true,” she says bitterly. “He was definitely married, definitely my professor, and I definitely fucked him.”
Jealousy rolls through me again, and I try to shut it down, pacing back and forth through the tiny office.
“Just tell me what else so I’m not surprised,” I say.
“Kostya, I don’t even know what you want me to say,” she says, eyes closed, her forehead in one hand. “That’s the worst. That’s the worst by a mile.”
“You got kicked out of boarding school,” I say. “You told me that.”
She looks at me, with a long, slow look.
“Okay,” she finally says. “I stole twenty bucks out of my mom’s purse when I was thirteen and bought cigarettes. I lost my virginity at sixteen to a senator’s son in the back of his Range Rover. I got a fake ID when I was seventeen and used to sneak out and go to bars in Boston. One time, I hit a parking sign with my mom’s car, got a ding, and when she asked about it I lied. I tried cocaine once my freshman year of college, which was the same year I got so drunk I threw up on Boston Common. I went skinny dipping on Cape Cod.”
She flings up her hands, slumps in the chair, and stares at me.
“It’s normal stuff, Kostya,” she says. “It was dumb, but I never hurt anyone besides myself. I never did cocaine again and a month ago in Amsterdam was the first time I’d smoked pot in a year and a half. I finally confessed to my mom about the car and it turns out she knew the whole damn time, because she’s not stupid.”
Her eyes are glittering with tears. She looks back down at the table, and I feel shittier than I even thought possible.
“Did you want anything else?” she asks, her voice hushed and strangled. “Maybe the time I killed my goldfish when I was ten because I forgot to feed it?”
“That’s everything,” I say, quietly.
She stands, her arms crossed in front of her, jaw clenched against the angry tears filling her eyes.
“Am I dismissed?” she asks.
I just want to fucking rewind. To five minutes ago, before I picked this stupid fight with the person who matters most to me. To yesterday, in the stairwell, when maybe I could have said I miss you, I’m sorry, I want it to be different.
To the day my father was murdered, when maybe we could have left twenty minutes earlier and driven away and just never come back.
“Things are starting to turn around,” I say, swallowing. “We’re gaining ground. The staff is going back home. We’ll have the airport within a week.”
“And then I go home?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say.
She nods once, dodges around me, and leaves the office.
I sit in the folding chair, my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands, because right now, I hate this. I hate being King, I hate being in charge, I hate being watched every second, and I hate that I couldn’t even stop that conversation from going down the drain.
I’m still sitting there when Niko finds me a few minutes later.
“Good news,” he says.
“Please,” I say.
Chapter Thirty-One
Hazel
I don’t cry until I’m power walking down the hall, head down, trying to hide my
face with my hair because I absolutely fucking hate it when I cry and I hate it worse when I cry in public.
I flee to the laundry room, in the basement, because it’s warm and noisy and there’s no one in there. For a moment I consider burying myself in the huge basket of clean sheets, but I settle for sitting on the floor in the corner, my back against an industrial dryer.
Then I just fucking sob. I’m angry at the Post for telling everyone why I dropped out of med school and for running that picture, but I’m mad at myself all over again for doing it in the first place. I’m angry at Kostya for being a dick about it, and I’m angry at him for not even saying something and just cutting contact without even saying goodbye.
“I’m sorry?” What the fuck is that?
Then I feel awful for being mad at him, because he has way bigger shit to worry about than my feelings, and I should give him the benefit of the doubt. I fucking know that, but I still feel like he’s taken sandpaper to my heart. And now I’m going home, and even though I know it’s obviously the best decision, I don’t want to.
I want to stay here. I want things to be normal again. I want to go back to Kostya trying to make jokes in the rose garden.
After a while, I stop finding reasons that I’m crying and just cry until I’ve got the hiccups.
I’m in the laundry room for a long, long time.
Kostya was right, and things start to turn around. He figured out pretty fast that the United Svelorian Front wasn’t united at all: the group responsible for his father’s death was a tiny, fringe segment, and a much larger part of the Front would be happy with governmental reform instead of overthrow.
Plus, the peaceful factions resent the fringe elements for dragging them into this. It doesn’t take much for the USF to start fighting itself while the Svelorian army nips at its heels.
Once Velinsk is safe, the palace workers all go home. Yelena goes back to her family’s villa on the Black Sea, and suddenly, the palace feels oddly empty without her around to chat with me about the best time to go sailing on the sea, or her favorite shampoo, or home remedies for colds.